Iran is intensifying
strikes across the region after Supreme Leader Khamenei's assassination,
as Trump floats new talks and more bombing.
On Saturday, President Donald Trump went to TruthSocial to announce
the U.S. and Israel had been successful in assassinating Iran’s Supreme
Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “Khamenei, one of the most evil people
in History, is dead,” Trump wrote. “He was unable to avoid our
Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working
closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that
have been killed along with him, could do.”
The New York Times followed with a breathless account
published Sunday purporting to tell the secret story of how the CIA and
Israel hunted down Khamenei, “tracking him for months” and “gaining
more confidence about his locations and his patterns,” before
pinpointing his location so he could be killed. “People briefed on the
operation described it as a product of good intelligence and months of
preparations,” the report claimed.
Khamenei’s secret location, it turned out, was simply his office.
The
U.S. and Israel have consistently claimed Khamenei was in hiding. “This
is basically just fabricated drama to make Trump look bigger and more
dramatic than he really is,” a senior Iranian official told Drop Site.
He spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to
speak about internal matters.
Iran’s Supreme National Security
Council “personally recommended to [Khamenei] that he relocate, change
his workplace, and even adjust his living arrangements for safety
reasons,” the Iranian official said. “But [Khamenei] had a completely
different perspective on moving—he insisted on keeping things as normal
and ordinary as possible, without seeking extra security measures or
standing out in any way.”
For breaking news updates, follow Drop Site News on X.
Ali
Larijani, the chair of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council said
Iranian officials anticipated that the U.S. and Israel would target
Khamenei. “They decided to strike him first. This analysis was also
circulating among military circles—that they were pursuing exactly this
objective,” he told Iranian state TV after Iran confirmed Khamenei was
killed.
“This event is an extraordinarily bitter one for us,”
Larijani added. “America and the Zionists, through this act, have
effectively created a situation for Iran—for the Iranian people—that we
must say: You have burned the heart of the Iranian people. We will burn
your hearts in return.”
As of Sunday morning, the Iranian
Red Crescent and state-linked media have reported preliminary casualty
figures of over 200 people killed and more than 740 injured across Iran,
though the actual toll is expected to be significantly higher. One
strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab killed 165, according to the state-run IRNA news agency.
Within
hours of the U.S.-Israeli bombing, Iran began launching barrages of
ballistic missiles at Israel in attacks that have so far killed at least
11 people and injured several hundred. On Sunday morning, an Iranian
missile struck a building near Jerusalem, in an attack that is estimated
to have killed at least nine people in a bomb shelter.
“The
Islamic Republic of Iran considers bloodshed and revenge against the
perpetrators and commanders of this crime as its legitimate duty and
right, and will fulfill this great responsibility and duty with all its
might,” Pezeshkian said Sunday in a statement carried on state TV.
Iran
has also unleashed a series of sustained missile and drone attacks
against U.S. military facilities across the Persian Gulf, striking the
United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, as well as
targets in Jordan. The UAE reported three deaths and 58 minor injuries
in Iranian strikes, with most of those impacted believed to be foreign
workers. Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest airline hub,
was also damaged and partially shut down after an unidentified
projectile struck one of its concourses. Two were also killed in Iraq
and one in Kuwait.
The attacks have also drawn the first
acknowledged U.S. military casualties of the war. In a statement early
Sunday, U.S. Central Command announced that three American service
members had been killed and five others seriously wounded during
“Operation Epic Fury,” adding that several other additional personnel
had sustained minor shrapnel injuries. The soldiers killed had been
deployed to a base in Kuwait supporting the operation, U.S. officials
told NBC News.
Iranian officials have said their initial response
to the U.S.-Israeli bombing, while unprecedented in scope, did not
represent the full force of Tehran’s potential retaliatory strikes.
The
Saturday strikes on Khamenei’s office wiped out the top echelon of
Iran’s political and military structure and killed several of the late
Supreme Leader’s family members. Iran, which has spent decades investing
in a horizontal leadership structure to defend against this type of
attack, announced a new leadership structure. Along with President
Masoud Pezeshkian, Iran’s new interim leadership council includes
Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, the head of Iran’s judiciary, and Ayatollah
Ali Arafi, a prominent member of Iran’s Guardian Council and Assembly
of Experts—the body that is ultimately responsible for choosing the
country’s Supreme Leader.
The White House said President Trump
intends to speak with what a U.S. official called the “new potential
leadership” of Iran in the coming days and Trump has suggested the war
may be shorter in duration than he initially projected. “They want to
talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They
should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very
practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long,” Trump told The
Atlantic. “They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner.
They played too cute.”
For now, Trump said in a post on Truth
Social, “heavy” bombing would continue “uninterrupted throughout the
week or, as long as necessary.”
In a pre-recorded message on Sunday afternoon,
Trump said, “I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian
military, police to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face
certain death. It will be certain death. Won’t be pretty. I call upon
all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment.”
Likewise,
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would expand its
strikes. “In the coming days, we will strike thousands of targets of the
terrorist regime,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on social media.
“We will create the conditions for the brave people of Iran to free
themselves from the chains of tyranny.”
Trump said he still
believes there will be an uprising in Iran spurred by the U.S.-Israeli
bombings and assassinations. “I think it’s gonna happen,” Trump told the
Atlantic.
“Everyone said that if Ali Khamenei is killed the
people will come into the streets to overthrow the regime, and so far
that has not happened. Some people have cheered, but overall the system
is quite resilient,” said Sina Azodi, director of Middle East studies at
Georgetown University. “One thing the Israelis have tried for the past
two years is decapitating the top echelon of their enemy and expecting
them to implode tomorrow. That works well against non-state actors, but
not against a state actor that is quite resilient, has a constitution
and other structures in place, and that in its early years already had
to go through the experience of total war and leadership
assassinations.”
Hooman Majd, an Iranian-American political
analyst who served as an advisor to former Iranian President Mohammed
Katami, said Iran has been preparing for major U.S.-Israeli attacks
since the 12-day war last June, during which more than 1,000 Iranians
were killed, including senior military commanders. “Their military
leadership is quite deep in terms of both the regular army, the IRGC,
and the Navy. They have an ability to sustain a war, perhaps even longer
than the U.S. wants to,” Majd told Drop Site. “There will come a point
at which Trump may decide Trump is the one who wants the off-ramp, not
Iran.”
Majd
said that if Iran decided to start targeting oil infrastructure in the
Persian Gulf or completely shut off access to the Strait of Hormuz, the
economic consequences would be significant. “A financial hit on America
and Western Europe is something that nobody wants for a long period of
time, certainly not Trump,” he said. “So there’s going to be an
advantage for Trump to have [an off ramp]. But if he really believes
that Iran is then going to come in and say, ‘Enough, we give up,
whatever you want, we’ll do,’ that’s very unlikely.”
Iran, meanwhile, has said it remains open to diplomacy and has denounced the U.S. “deception”
in the purported negotiations that preceded the bombings that began
Saturday morning. Technical talks were scheduled for Monday in Vienna.
Oman’s Foreign Minister, Badr Al Busaidi, the chief mediator of the
talks between Iran and the U.S., said Sunday he had spoken with Iran’s
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. In a statement, Al Busaidi called for a
ceasefire and said that Araghchi told him Iran was open “to any serious
efforts that contribute to stopping the escalation and returning to
stability.”
In an appearance Sunday on ABC’s This Week,
Araghchi was asked by host George Stephanopoulos if a diplomatic
resolution was still possible. “You answer this question,” Araghchi shot
back. “We negotiated with the United States twice in the past 12
months. And in both cases, they attacked us in the middle of
negotiation. And that has become a very bitter experience for us.”
Dr.
Foad Izadi, a professor at the University of Tehran, said that Iranian
forces still have not used their most powerful weapons systems,
including its hypersonic and long-range ballistic missiles, in
retaliatory strikes against Israel and U.S. bases and vessels in the
region. If meaningful steps toward a ceasefire or a return to diplomatic
talks do not emerge soon, he said, Iran is likely to intensify its
military responses.
“[Iranian leaders] are getting this idea that
you either use it or lose it. Iran has some capabilities and the other
side is hitting these capabilities, so the sense is that Iran should use
these capabilities as long as they remain available,” said Izadi, a
prominent supporter of the Iranian government, in an interview with Drop
Site. “They have to basically measure how much they can use, when they
can use it, keeping in mind that they may not be able to access these
stockpiles if they wait too long. But when you lose senior commanders,
then sometimes making decisions on these issues becomes more difficult.”
The
Gulf states have issued strong denunciations of “Iranian aggression”
against them, while avoiding explicit demands for an end to the U.S.
attacks that are being launched with the use of military and
intelligence facilities on their soil.
“To the countries of
the region: We are not seeking to attack you,” said Larijani, one of the
central figures directing Iran’s current strategy. “When the bases
located in your country are used against us, and when the United States
carries out operations in the region relying on these forces, then we
will target those bases. For these bases are not part of the land of
those countries; rather, they are American soil,” he wrote on X.
But
Iran has not only struck U.S. military facilities. It has also hit
civilian airports in Kuwait, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, as well as
hotels and other buildings in the UAE and Bahrain. “We have begun
targeting their military bases. They evacuated their bases and moved
into hotels, turning civilians into human shields,” Araghchi charged in
an interview with Al Jazeera. “We are trying to target only military
personnel and facilities assisting U.S. operations against Iran.”
On
Sunday, an Iranian strike also hit a port in Oman, the central mediator
in the recent negotiations between Iran and the US. Araghchi said the
strike was not intended as an attack on Oman and indicated that it was
the result of pre-selected targets developed before the war began. “We
have already told our Armed Forces to be careful about the targets that
they choose,” he told Al Jazeera. “Our military units are now, in fact,
independent and somehow isolated, and they are acting based on general
instructions given to them in advance.”
The Kingdom of Saudi
Arabia summoned the Iranian ambassador on Saturday and issued a
statement condemning what it described as “cowardly Iranian attacks”
targeting its territory. In a Sunday interview with CNN, United Arab
Emirates Minister of State for International Cooperation Reem Al-Hashimy
conveyed a similar combative stance, saying that the UAE won’t “sit
idly by.” The UAE also said it had closed its embassy in Tehran and
withdrawn its ambassador and diplomatic mission.
In an
extraordinary meeting held via video conference on Sunday, the Gulf
Cooperation Council (GCC) condemned “treacherous Iranian attacks” on GCC
countries and Jordan and stated that it will take “all necessary
measures to defend its security and stability,” including the option to
“respond to the aggression.” The GCC said that attacks happened despite
“repeated assurances that their territories would not be used to launch
any attack” on Iran and urged for decisive action from the UN Security
Council, “noting that the stability of the Gulf region is not only a
regional concern but also a cornerstone of global economic stability and
maritime navigation.”
Araghchi said that Iran’s Arab neighbors
“should be angry at the United States and Israel,” adding, “They should
not pressure us to stop this war; they should pressure the other side.”
Analysts
have suggested that some of the targets hit by Iran in the opening
phase of the war were selected because Iranian intelligence believed
they housed Israeli intelligence and defense companies or personnel. The
U.S. embassy in Bahrain evacuated government personnel from hotels and
issued a warning for citizens to avoid hotels in the country after an Iranian strike on the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama.
“Right
after the 12-day war, with the threat of a new regional conflict
looming, Iran’s security and military agencies jointly put together a
target bank that included potential strikes on American and Israeli
personnel and forces if things escalated into a full-blown regional
war,” the senior Iranian official told Drop Site. “The fact that they’ve
now pinpointed the residences/locations of some of these forces has
really caught the Americans and Israelis off guard. And yeah, the
precision and targeting of these attacks are getting sharper and more
focused by the day.” There has been no independent confirmation that any
of the sites hit by Iran housed Israeli intelligence facilities or
personnel.
“The UAE is host to a lot of Israeli intelligence
companies, arms companies, and Iran considers those offices legitimate
targets because they’re Israeli targets,” Izadi said. “The UAE
government has allowed Israelis to basically have an unofficial base in
different parts of UAE. Part of the Israeli operation against Iran is
run out of the UAE. So Iran has been monitoring these places.”
On
Sunday, the Israeli Broadcasting Authority reported that an Iranian
drone struck an apartment inhabited by Israelis in Abu Dhabi near the
Israeli embassy. The UAE is one of the only Muslim countries in the
world to have normalized relations with Israel and officials from both
countries often publicly celebrate their close ties.
Amid a wave
of attacks on targets in the UAE including iconic buildings like the
Burj al-Arab hotel, which was reportedly struck by a drone, multiple
fires visible from satellite imagery also broke out at one of the berths
at Jebel Ali Port after debris from what local authorities claimed was
as an “aerial interception” struck the area. Jebel Ali is the largest
container shipping port in the Middle East and a critical node in the
Emirati economy. DP World, which operates the facility, announced that
it was suspending operations at the port temporarily in response to the
attack.
The leaders of France, Germany and the UK issued a joint
statement Sunday that appeared to indicate they may get involved
directly with the U.S.-Israeli war. “We will take steps to defend our
interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through
enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s
capability to fire missiles and drones at their source,” they wrote. “We
have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on
this matter.“
Faced with an existential war, Iran has long
signaled it could retaliate by striking the global economy—including by
hitting oil facilities around the Persian Gulf. In addition to the
attacks on Jebel Ali, at least two ships, including an oil tanker, in
the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz were also hit by projectiles
over the past 24 hours. The Iranian government has warned ships not to
attempt to cross the strait, through which roughly 20% of global oil and
gas production flows. As of Sunday, over 200 ships, including at least
150 oil and gas tankers, are estimated to have dropped anchor outside
the waterway, while commercial traffic has plunged 70%. Oil prices have
already risen by over 10% to over $80 a barrel and could rise above $100
in the event of further escalation.
“Iran’s strategy and only
real option is to continue attacking and increase the costs on the
Americans and U.S. allies. Part of that strategy of increasing costs
means attacking the GCC countries but also hitting U.S. bases in the
region. We have now seen the three Americans killed and the Iranians
know that Americans are sensitive to casualties including in a midterm
election year,” said Azodi. “For Iran, an ideal scenario might be to
fight for three to four weeks after which there is no clear winner at
the end—they are trying to increase pressure in every way. They cannot
win the war but they can absorb a lot of punishment and can force it to
stop.”
Jawa Ahmad, Drop Site’s Middle East research fellow, contributed to this report.
Source: https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/iran-war-trump-israel-khamenei-assassination-retaliation-gulf-states
.png){kind=tracking}
.png){kind=tracking}
.png){kind=tracking}
.png){kind=tracking}
%20%E2%80%93%20Scaled%20(70%25).png){kind=tracking}