Live Updates: Iran Names Khamenei’s Son New Supreme Leader
Top clerics said in a statement published in state media that they had picked Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to succeed his father.
Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the country’s slain supreme leader, as his father’s successor, according to a statement from top clerics published on state media. His ascension, announced early Monday morning, signals the government’s desire for continuity as Iran faces expanding attacks from the United States and Israel nine days into the war.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was appointed by a committee of senior Shiite clerics after Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the highest authority in the country for more than three decades, was killed in an airstrike during the opening blow of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. He is known for having close ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and takes the helm not just as Iran’s new religious and political authority but also as the commander in chief of its armed forces.
Israel’s military has been threatening to kill whoever succeeds Ayatollah Khamenei, and President Trump has called the younger Khamenei an “unacceptable” choice. Before the announcement, he warned in an ABC News interview on Sunday that the next supreme leader “is not going to last long” without the approval of the United States.
There was no sign of an offramp for the war, as fears mounted that the fighting would broaden across the Middle East. In a sign that American officials were aware of growing risks in the region, the State Department told American diplomats to leave Saudi Arabia, according to current and former U.S. officials.
And as markets opened Sunday evening, oil prices surged more than 10 percent, crossing $100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries bombarded Iranian military targets and energy facilities over the weekend. Water desalination plants also came under attack in Iran and on the Persian Gulf island of Bahrain, as strikes on civilian infrastructure threatened to affect the lives of millions of people.
Dense, oily clouds from strikes on fuel depots had settled over Tehran on Sunday, according to residents and video. “With the fire it felt like night became day, and then with all the smoke the day turned back into night again,” said Aryan, 33, a resident who requested anonymity to avoid possible retribution by the Iranian authorities.
Israel’s military said it had targeted the fuel depots because they were being used by Iran’s military, and a senior U.S. military official said American forces were targeting sites affiliated with the Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as well as missile sites and air defenses. Iran retaliated by firing barrages of missiles and drones across the Persian Gulf and Israel, some of which hit critical civilian infrastructure.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said the strike on a facility in Bahrain came only after the United States had hit an Iranian desalination plant on Qeshm Island, affecting the water supply for 30 villages. “The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” he said on social media.
Here’s what else we’re covering:
American casualty: The Pentagon said a seventh American service member had died, a week after being wounded in an Iranian attack on a military base in Saudi Arabia where U.S. troops were stationed.
Migrant worker deaths: Saudi Arabia reported its first civilian deaths: Two foreign residents — one Indian national and one Bangladeshi national — were killed, and 12 more Bangladeshi residents were injured, after a “military projectile” fell on their residence in the Kharj region, according to the kingdom’s civil defense authority. Migrant workers have been among the most heavily affected by Iranian attacks in the Persian Gulf countries.
Death toll: The death toll in Iran remained shrouded in uncertainty. Earlier this week, the Red Crescent Society said nearly 800 people had been killed, but it has not provided an official update to that figure in recent days. On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to the U.N. put the number of dead over 1,300.
Beirut attacks: An Israeli airstrike hit a hotel in central Beirut on Sunday, killing at least four people, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The Israeli military said it had attacked commanders in the Quds Force special forces, a branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that helps manage Iranian ties to proxy militias across the region. The death toll from the Israeli military operation in Lebanon has risen to almost 400, the Lebanese health ministry said Sunday.
Gulf strikes: Kuwait’s defense ministry reported “a wave of drones” that damaged fuel storage tanks at the country’s international airport. Two border guards were killed in the country, raising the death toll in the Gulf to at least 14.
Stocks futures, which give traders the chance to bet on the market before exchanges open on Monday morning, fell on Sunday evening. Futures on the S&P 500, Nasdaq Composite, and Dow Jones Industrial Average all fell roughly 1.5 percent.
Oil prices surged more than 10 percent as markets opened this evening, with international prices crossing $100 a barrel for the first time in almost four years. Oil is now trading around $104 a barrel.
Major developments — March 8
Israeli airstrike hits hotel in Beirut
Oil depot attacks near Tehran ramp up
Desalination plant in Bahrain damaged
Desalination plant in Iran damaged
State Dept. reportedly tells U.S. employees of embassy to leave
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Carlotta Gall has reported from Istanbul, Ukraine, the Middle East and Central Asia.
There have been only two supreme leaders since the job was created after the Iranian Revolution in 1979 for Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Now Iran has a third.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a 56-year-old politician, cleric and son of the previous supreme leader, was appointed to the role by a council of 88 clerics, known as the Assembly of Experts, according to a statement released early Monday morning local time.
As supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei becomes the head of state of the Islamic Republic of Iran, both a spiritual leader and the highest authority in the land. Under Iran’s Constitution, that gives him overarching control of Iran’s politics and its armed forces, as well as leadership in religious affairs.
The supreme leader takes a public stance on foreign policy and military affairs, as well as internal issues — including suppressing dissent.
He rules by issuing decrees, oversees government policy and makes all senior appointments including for the military, the judiciary and the head of the state broadcasting service. The supreme leader can also issue a fatwa, a nonbinding religious opinion on matters of religious and civil life that can carry weight far beyond Iran’s borders.
The role has changed over the years partly because of the differences of the men appointed.
Ayatollah Khomeini was an eminent religious scholar and political revolutionary who inspired a popular following and was a driver in establishing Iran’s theocracy on the principle that an expert in Islamic jurisprudence should oversee the government to ensure justice.
Yet when he died ten years later in 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was selected, who was less qualified as a religious scholar and did not command such a following among the faithful.
Iran’s Constitution was amended at the time of his selection to stipulate that the supreme leader only needed to show “Islamic scholarship.” He nevertheless was a Sayed, meaning he was from a family descended from Prophet Muhammad, and was accorded the title of Ayatollah with his appointment.
In his will and last word, Ayatollah Khomeini had set the tone for a transition, telling his people that their loyalty should be to the Islamic Republic. The state itself became the repository of spirituality and religion, said Vali Nasr, an expert on Iran and Shiite Islam at Johns Hopkins University.
“The office under Khamenei essentially became secular in its function,” Mr. Nasr said. “The state promoted him as a very distinguished cleric, but by no means was he recognized by the faithful as the pre-eminent Shia cleric,” such as the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani of Iraq, Mr. Nasr said.
Ayatollah Khamenei ruled for more than 36 years until he was killed when the United States and Israel opened strikes on Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28. His legacy was of an authoritarian who sought to protect Shia communities abroad but brutally suppressed his own population.
His killing, perceived as martyrdom by the faithful, sparked anger and grief among many of the world’s more than 200 million Shiite Muslims, even while it was celebrated by the many who opposed his harsh rule.
Mojtaba Khamenei also does not have high religious standing, but was groomed for the position, serving in the Islamic Republican Guard Corps, studying at a religious seminary and then working closely with his father.
His succession, following his father, marks a break from the meritocracy set by the Iranian revolution, which rejected the monarchy for the undemocratic nature of hereditary rule.
Yet he was considered a front-runner for the post because of the nature of his father’s death and his strong political and military connections, said Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House, a London-based research group.
The office he inherits today draws its power from its political and military control.
The supreme leader is the commander in chief of Iran’s military forces and of the Islamic Republican Guard Corps, a paramilitary force that has become the most powerful branch of the military and controls its ballistic missile arsenal.
Designated a terrorist group by the United States in 2019, the Republican Guard is accused of sponsoring multiple proxy forces in countries across the Middle East to counter Israel and the United States.
Since they opened their military campaign, the U.S. and Israel have targeted bases of the Republican Guard and other domestic security forces, hoping to shake the supreme leader’s hold on the country.
Iran has a nationally elected president who runs its administration. But even he is the second in command of the executive branch after the supreme leader.
The president appoints cabinet members, but they have first to be approved by parliament and the supreme leader. The president is elected to a four-year term and can only serve a maximum of two terms. His election is approved by the supreme leader.
The head of the judiciary is also appointed by the supreme leader. The judicial system in Iran is run by Shia clerics and all decisions must be in accordance with Islamic law, or Shariah. The penal code was rewritten after the 1979 revolution, and harsh punishments are imposed under Shariah including corporal punishments and executions.
None of the men considered contenders for supreme leader were highly ranked clerics, Mr. Nasr pointed out. Those selecting a new leader were most probably focused on continuity, he said.
“I don’t think anybody in Iran right now wants to do something that suggests that the system is breaking,” he said.
Mojtaba Khamenei was a leading contender because of the close connections forged working under his father, Ms. Vakil said.
“Because he’s deeply integrated into to the regime’s networks and he represents continuity, and he will be supported by Iran’s deep state,” she said. “He really will bring the support of elites, the security establishment, and the broad system. This is what he ultimately represents.”
Iran’s new supreme leader is believed to have especially close ties with the Revolutionary Guards because he served in their ranks during the last years of the Iran-Iraq war, which ended in 1988, when he had just finished high school.
Shortly after the announcement, government supporters poured into the streets of Tehran to celebrate. They cheered and waved large flags, state television showed. Opponents of the government, meanwhile, reacted to the news by chanting “Death to Mojtaba” from their windows and rooftops of the capital, residents said in text messages.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe statement from the Assembly of Experts said the council, composed of 88 clerics, had determined Mojtaba Khamenei was the right religious and political leader to continue the legacy of his slain father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Farnaz Fassihi has lived and worked in Iran, has covered the country for three decades and was a war correspondent in the Middle East for 15 years.
Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the recently killed supreme leader, as his father’s successor, according to a statement from top clerics published on state media early Monday local time, signaling the continuity of hard-line theocratic rule as Israeli and U.S. airstrikes pound the country.
Mr. Khamenei himself, though, is something of a mystery even within Iran.
He is a son of the recently killed supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has been an influential figure in the shadows of power, coordinating military and intelligence operations at his father’s office. He is known to have very close ties to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and was considered their favored candidate.
Unlike his father, Mr. Khamenei, 56, carries the full religious credentials as an ayatollah at the moment of his ascension. He was known for teaching popular Shiite seminary classes.
But his personality or politics outside of his father’s tight inner circle are not known. He seldom speaks or appears in public. And now he will take the helm not just as Iran’s new religious and political authority, but also as the commander in chief of its armed forces.
Vali R. Nasr, an expert on Iran and Shiite Islam at Johns Hopkins University, said that Mr. Khamenei would be a surprising choice, but a telling one.
“The choice of Mojtaba is choice of continuity with his father, and also he is more ready than other candidates to quickly consolidate power and assert control over the system,” said Mr. Nasr. He added that Mr. Khamenei had been considered a successor for a long time; but for the past two years, he had seemed to have dropped off the radar.
The late Ayatollah Khamenei had indicated to close advisers that he did not want his son to succeed him because he did not want the role to become hereditary, according to three senior Iranian officials familiar with Mr. Khamenei and the selection process. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal issues.
After all, the Islamic revolution in 1979 had toppled a monarchy with the promise to end the hereditary transfer of power and return it to the people.
But Mr. Khamenei’s ascension suggests that those in Iran’s circles of power — the senior clerics, the Guards and influential politicians, such as the head of the National Security Council, Ali Larijani — had closed ranks at a time of acute crisis and war.
Mr. Larijani, a pragmatic veteran politician who has taken center stage in running the country, and Mr. Khamenei are old allies and friends. Both men are also influential within Iran’s armed forces.
The Revolutionary Guards were founded as an ideological force charged with defending the Islamic republic and its borders, and to provide a buffer layer of security in case of defections and coups in the army. The Guards have since turned into a political, military and economic powerhouse. They are directing the waves of ballistic missiles and drones against Israel, Arab countries in the Persian Gulf, and U.S. bases and embassies in the region, as massive U.S. and Israeli airstrikes continue.
Mr. Khamenei was selected by a group known as the Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 senior Shiite clerics. Even as the assembly was debating its choice on Tuesday, Israel struck a building in Qum, one of Shiite Islam’s main seats of power, where the assembly would traditionally meet to vote on a new leader. But the building was empty, according to the Fars News agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, and the clerics were meeting virtually for security.
During the deliberations, the majority of the senior clerics in the assembly pushed for Mr. Khamenei’s appointment, arguing that he had the qualifications needed to steer Iran in this moment, according to the three Iranian officials. Some clerics said that after the Ayatollah had been killed by America and Israel, choosing his son would honor his legacy.
“Mojtaba is the wisest pick right now because he is intimately familiar with running and coordinating security and military apparatuses,” Mehdi Rahmati, an analyst in Tehran, said in an interview. “He was in charge of this already.”
But Mr. Rahmati acknowledged that the appointment carries the risk of further polarizing a population that is deeply divided, with many Iranians deeply opposed to the Islamic republic’s rule.
“A portion of the public will react negatively and forcefully to this decision, and it will have a backlash,” he said.
The late Ayatollah Khamenei had the final say on all main state matters. He showed little flexibility on domestic reforms, and offered few concessions in nuclear negotiations with the United States. He ordered the lethal crackdown on nationwide protests in January that were calling for the end to his rule. Security forces killed at least 7,000 people during that crackdown, according to rights groups that say the numbers could rise significantly when verification is completed.
Since the war began, U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have killed not just Mr. Khamenei’s father, but also his wife, Zahra Adel; his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh; and a son; the Iranian government said.
Other candidates who were considered to be finalists for the supreme leader role were Alireza Arafi, a cleric and jurist who was part of the three-person transition council of leadership named after Ayatollah Khamenei was killed, and Seyed Hassan Khomeini, a grandson of the Islamic revolution’s founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Both Mr. Arafi and Mr. Khomeini are viewed as moderates, with the latter being close to the sidelined reformist political faction in Iran.
Some analysts hold that Mr. Khamenei might yet lean toward reform, despite his father’s style. They argue that he is of a younger, more pragmatic generation of clerics and because of his lineage would face less resistance from the hard-line and conservative factions.
Abdolreza Davari, a politician close to Mr. Khamenei, said in a phone interview from Tehran that if Mr. Khamenei did succeed his father, he might emerge as a figure in the style of the Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman, who has brought some liberalization to his society.
“If there is anyone who could move toward some sort of de-escalation with the United States, it is him — any other person would face backlash from the ruling class and conservatives,” said Mr. Davari. “He intends to bring structural change.”
How Washington would view him is uncertain. On Tuesday, at a news conference in Washington, President Trump said that many of the people his government had viewed as potential leaders of Iran had been killed since the fighting began. “Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody,” he said.
Asked about a worst-case scenario in Iran, he said: “I guess the worst case would be we do this and somebody takes over who’s as bad as the previous person. Right, that could happen. We don’t want that to happen.”
Iran announced that Mojtaba Khamenei would succeed his father as the third supreme leader, in a statement from the Assembly of Experts published on state media.
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Edward WongMark MazzettiVivian Nereim and Adam Rasgon
Reporting from Washington; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Jerusalem
American employees of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Saudi Arabia have been told to leave the country under mandatory departure orders issued by the State Department, according to current and former U.S. officials.
The move by the State Department means American officials are aware of growing risks in the region. It is the first time the agency has approved or issued what it calls an ordered departure in Saudi Arabia since the U.S.-Israel war on Iran began on Feb. 28.
In recent days, nonessential U.S. government employees and family members at diplomatic posts in the country had been told they could volunteer to leave, but there had been no mandatory departure orders. The officials describing the new orders spoke on the condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to disclose the information.
The ordered departure at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, comes after several attacks from Iran on the building and in the nearby area. On Tuesday, the Saudi Defense Ministry said the embassy had been attacked by two drones, resulting in “limited fire and minor material damage to the building.”
The embassy warned people to avoid the location, saying there had been “an attack on the facility.” It also issued a security alert and a shelter-in-place notification for Americans in Riyadh, as well as in Jeddah and Dhahran, two cities where there are U.S. consulates. American government employees in those consulates are also being told to prepare for ordered departure, an official said.
Early on Sunday, the Saudi Defense Ministry announced that it had shot down a drone that had been aimed at the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh, where the U.S. Embassy and those of other nations are located.
The State Department did not reply to an email with questions about the orders.
The U.S. mission in Saudi Arabia is led by Alison Dilworth, a career diplomat who is the acting chief of mission. The mission has not had a Senate-confirmed ambassador since the start of the Trump administration, when political appointees in Washington forced out Michael Ratney, a career diplomat who was the ambassador. It is unusual for an administration to remove career diplomats from ambassadorships before they complete a standard-length tour.
Top diplomats in Saudi Arabia had made a request to Washington recently for the mission to go on ordered departure, with the expectation that the request would be approved given the frequent attacks, officials said.
After the initial airstrikes in Iran by the United States and Israel, the Iranian military retaliated by firing barrages of missiles and drones at countries in the region, including Arab Gulf nations that have U.S. bases or a troop presence or are considered partners of the United States and Israel. That has made some of those governments furious at Iran, while making people across the region fearful of the attacks.
The State Department has come under intense criticism for not urging the many thousands of American citizens in the region to leave before the start of the war — the Trump administration and Israel had been planning secretly to conduct military strikes for many weeks — and for providing limited help to evacuate them once the missiles began flying.
Many countries shut down their airspace, and commercial airlines stopped operating flights in and out of the region. Dylan Johnson, a senior official at the department, said on Sunday that the department had evacuated Americans on nearly two dozen charter flights in recent days.
In the run-up to the war, only two embassies said employees could go on authorized departure, which meant nonessential personnel and family members could leave if they wanted. Those were the embassy in Beirut, which issued the message four days before the war began, and the embassy in Jerusalem, which did so the day before the start of the war. The authorized-departure message from Mike Huckabee, the ambassador to Israel and a supporter of the war, said employees should try to leave “TODAY.”
On March 2, after the war began, the State Department issued a mandatory ordered departure for nonessential employees at missions in Iraq. It soon issued the same order at a few other missions.
American diplomats in Muslim countries outside the Middle East are also on high alert.
Officials in Pakistan said on March 1 that at least 22 people were killed and 120 injured in clashes with security forces when protesters gathered in the southern city of Karachi and in the country’s north to denounce the American and Israeli war. At least 10 protesters were killed during an attempted storming of the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, officials said. Reuters reported that U.S. Marines fired on protesters.
Another American service member has died in the war with Iran, the Pentagon said on Sunday, bringing the number of American troops killed in the conflict to seven.
The service member, who was not publicly identified while the military notifies relatives, was seriously injured on March 1 when Iran struck a Saudi military base where American troops were stationed, U.S. Central Command said in a statement. The service member died on Saturday night from those injuries while military health officials were preparing a transfer for more advanced medical care at a U.S. military hospital in Germany, officials said.
On Saturday, President Trump witnessed the return of the bodies of the first six Americans killed in the war in a solemn ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. The six Army Reservists were killed after an Iranian drone strike Sunday at Shuaiba port in Kuwait.
Since the war began on Feb. 28, Iranian retaliatory strikes have killed at least 20 people, which, along with the American troops, includes people killed in Israel and in other countries in the region. Iran has borne the brunt of the death toll of U.S. and Israeli strikes. Earlier last week, the Red Crescent Society said nearly 800 people had been killed in Iran, but it has not provided an official update to that figure in recent days. On Friday, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations put the number of dead at over 1,300.
For the United States, the grim toll in the first week of the war signaled that Iran was more prepared for war than the Trump administration anticipated, U.S. military officials said. Iran has continued to put up a fight, even after its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other top officials were killed in Israeli attacks with intelligence help from the C.I.A.
In the past, Iran has given warning before launching retaliatory strikes and made known which bases housing U.S. troops it intended to hit. But since the start of the war, its strikes have been widespread and less predictable.
Mr. Trump and other administration officials said multiple times last week that they expect more U.S. casualties.
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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, said Sunday evening he spoke to his Iranian counterpart, Masoud Pezeshkian, and called on him to “immediately” stop strikes against countries in the Middle East and let ships pass safely through the Strait of Hormuz. In a social media post, Macron said he had spoken to Pezeshkian and expressed “grave concern” about Iran’s development of nuclear and ballistic programs and its “destabilizing activities in the region.”
The U.S. energy secretary said on Sunday that it might not be long before the many tankers stranded in the Persian Gulf start carrying oil out to the world again.
“We’re not too long, I think, before you will see more regular resumption of ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz,” Chris Wright, the energy secretary, said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Fearing an attack by Iran, nearly all ship operators have stopped their tankers going through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway on the southern coast of Iran through which a fifth of the world’s oil usually travels. Several tankers have been hit since the United States and Israel started their attacks on Iran on Feb. 28.
Mr. Wright said that, “worst case,” it would take “a few weeks” for normal numbers of tankers to return to the strait.
The tanker standstill is cutting the supply of oil products to world markets, and has led to a steep increase in the price of oil and begun to push up the cost of gasoline as well.
Mr. Wright said the United States had successfully destroyed many of the weapons that Iran might use to strike ships. “That work is going tremendously well,” he said.
He also said that a “large tanker” went through the Strait of Hormuz “about 24 hours ago.” He did not identify the tanker, and a spokesman for the Department of Energy did not respond to requests for more details on the ship.
A small tanker apparently carrying fuel oil went through the strait in the last 24 hours, said Dimitris Ampatzidis, a senior risk and compliance analyst at Kpler, a global ship tracking firm. Its transponder, a device that transmits a ship’s location, was on, which is why it could be tracked. Vessels sometimes turn off their transponders to avoid being spotted in the strait.
Mr. Ampatzidis said the vessel, the Parimal, appeared to have connections to Iran.
“I don’t believe this vessel can be used as an indication that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is returning to normal,” he said.
The cost of insuring vessels to carry oil through the strait has soared to prohibitively expensive levels. The Trump administration has said it would provide insurance at affordable rates to help get tankers moving again, saying on Friday that it had a plan insure up to $20 billion in losses. Shipping analysts have said, however, that the insurance commitment might have to be much larger.
President Trump has also said that the U.S. Navy might provide an escort force to protect tankers as they travel through the strait. Asked Sunday on CNN when the escort might begin, Mr. Wright did not give a date but he said that U.S. forces were focusing on trying to diminish Iran’s missile and drone capability “to reduce their ability to disrupt traffic.”
Saudi Arabia has reported its first civilian deaths since the war began. Two foreign residents — one Indian citizen and one Bangladeshi — were killed, and 12 more Bangladeshi residents were injured, after a “military projectile” fell on their residence in the Kharj region, according to a statement from the kingdom’s civil defense authority.
Kharj is home to a major Saudi air base used by the U.S. military and has faced repeated attacks since the war began. The civil defense statement described the area that was hit as housing for a cleaning and maintenance company. Migrant workers have been among the most heavily affected by Iranian attacks in the Persian Gulf countries.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENTJohn IsmayEric Schmitt and Johnatan Reiss
Reporting from Washington and Tel Aviv
The Pentagon is intensifying its attacks on the Iranian military as the war stretched into its ninth day.
U.S. forces on Sunday struck a broad array of military targets, said a senior U.S. military official who was not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing operations and discussed them on the condition of anonymity.
Targets for those airstrikes included sites affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian force with pervasive economic and military clout that constitutes the spine of a militarized state, as well as missiles and their launchers, and remaining Iranian air defenses, the official said.
The Israeli military said that it had completed a wave of strikes across Tehran on Sunday, including against 50 ammunition bunkers. It said it also targeted the headquarters of the Guards’ Space Force in the Iranian capital.
Earlier on Sunday, the Israeli military said that it had struck more than 400 targets across western and central Iran since Saturday morning.
The Pentagon has periodically issued high-level updates on the war in the form of statements that offer an accounting of how many airstrikes U.S. Central Command has carried out in Iran and what kinds of targets it has attacked.
On Sunday morning, U.S. Central Command issued a warning to civilians in Iran, asking them to stay indoors and away from mobile launchers for ballistic missile launchers and attack drones.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered his most recent public remarks on the war with Iran on Thursday during a news media briefing with Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads the U.S. Central Command. Mr. Hegseth said U.S. and Israeli warplanes “have relentlessly destroyed Iran’s air defenses over the past few days and they’ve continued hunting for more systems to kill.” On Friday, U.S. Central Command said that American forces had struck over 3,000 targets in the first week of the war, including damaging or destroying 43 Iranian ships.
The Pentagon has released the names of six U.S. service members who were killed by an Iranian attack drone in Kuwait on March 1. Their remains were repatriated in a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Saturday.
On Sunday, the Pentagon said a seventh U.S. service member had died in the war with Iran.
Approximately a dozen more U.S. troops were wounded in the March 1 attack, though the Pentagon has not released any identifying information.
Mr. Hegseth used a briefing to reporters at the Pentagon last week to broadcast a wide-ranging threat should more Americans become casualties, saying, “If you kill Americans, if you threaten Americans anywhere on Earth, we will hunt you down without apology.”
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations, which tracks security at sea, said in an update on Sunday afternoon that the Middle East maritime security posture remains at the highest threat level on its scale, adding that no commercial vessels have been targeted in the last day.
“Recent incident patterns suggest a campaign focused on creating operational disruption and uncertainty rather than exclusively attempting to sink vessels,” the UKMTO said. Credible threats persist against merchant ships and oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, Gulf of Oman, Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden, it added.
At least 117 Iranian citizens evacuated on Saturday from Beirut to Moscow on a Russia-supplied plane, according to two Lebanese officials, after Israel conducted strikes near the Iranian Embassy over the past week and warned Iranian government officials in Lebanon to leave the country “immediately before they are targeted.”
It also came after the Lebanese government announced it intended to arrest and deport any members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, or I.R.G.C., involved in military activities in Lebanon. Members of the I.R.G.C. have long acted as military advisors to Hezbollah, and analysts say they have been managing the group’s military wing more directly since Hezbollah’s last escalation with Israel.
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Reporting from Washington
The U.S. military warned civilians in Iran on Sunday to stay home as the United States and Israel continued their airstrikes against Iran’s weapons systems.
“U.S. forces strongly urge civilians in Iran to stay at home,” reads the message posted on X. “The Iranian regime is knowingly endangering innocent lives by using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations, including launching one-way attack drones and ballistic missiles.”
The statement was sent by U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, to reporters via email and posted on social media, but the effectiveness of warning civilians in a country where internet access has been shut down remains unclear.
“Locations used for military purposes lose protected status and could become legitimate military targets under international law,” the warning added. “The U.S. military takes every feasible precaution to minimize harm to civilians but cannot guarantee civilian safety in or near facilities used by the Iranian regime for military purposes.”
A U.S. military official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the announcement, said the warning was transmitted in Persian, Arabic and other languages, and said that the United States was coordinating with regional news outlets to spread the warning in addition to using Central Command’s social media platforms. The official added that the military would use Iranians outside the country to communicate the message to relatives still in Iran, but declined to explain how that would work in practice.
The U.S. military has dropped leaflets from warplanes as recently as 2016 during the campaign against Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq. Those messages are intended to directly convey messages to both civilians and enemy combatants in areas where other lines of communication are degraded and have been used in conflict since at least World War I, according to the U.S. Army.
When the United States and Israel began their strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, President Trump encouraged Iranian civilians to “take over” the government. The White House did not immediately respond to a question regarding whether Central Command’s warning on Sunday contradicted the president’s encouragement at the beginning of the war.
In a news release announcing the warning, Central Command called the Iranian government a “terrorist regime" that “blatantly disregards the safety of innocent people” by “using heavily populated civilian areas to conduct military operations.”
During wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon officially prohibited U.S. forces from targeting civilian locations such as mosques, schools and hospitals so long as they were not being actively used by insurgents to conducts hostilities. Nevertheless, U.S. strikes in the Middle East and elsewhere have resulted in scores of civilian deaths.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump blamed Iran for an airstrike that hit an Iranian elementary school and killed scores of children. An analysis by The New York Times indicates that the school was most likely hit by an American airstrike.
Eric Schmitt, Parin Behrooz and Minho Kim contributed reporting
Sarah ChaaytoDavid Guttenfelder and Amelia Nierenberg
Sarah Chaayto and David Guttenfelder reported from Nabi Sheet, Lebanon.
After a bout of fierce ground fighting between Israeli forces and the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, the residents of a village in eastern Lebanon gathered on Sunday to bury their dead.
At one of the funerals in the village, Nabi Sheet, men carried eight bodies — most identified as Hezbollah fighters — through the streets, some draped in the group’s yellow-and-green flag. Women dressed in black shouted in anguish.
“Have you ever seen a village that stood up to Israel as our village did?” said Hiba Kanaan, 27, one of the mourners. She said she had briefly fled the village with her 3-year-old son to escape the violence while her husband stayed on to fight.
By Sunday, she had returned to mourn her neighbors who were killed.
The fighting in Nabi Sheet began overnight between Friday and Saturday. Israel sent in special forces by helicopter, and once the commandos landed, they were confronted by residents and armed fighters in the village, according to Lebanese state media.
On Saturday, Hezbollah said that it had targeted the Israeli force with rockets.
The Lebanese military said that three of its soldiers had been killed in the clashes.
By Saturday, the center of Nabi Sheet was littered with debris, mangled cars and destroyed shops. There was a massive crater in the center of the village — one car had been blown to the upper floor of a destroyed apartment block.
On Sunday came the funerals.
Ms. Kanaan said the villagers had died trying to defend their land.
“They protected us,” she said.
Her village, near Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, is one small part of a widening regional war that started on Feb. 28 when the United States and Israel attacked Iran.
On Monday, Lebanon became a new front when Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel, shattering a fragile truce in place for more than a year.
Israel has hit back hard, focusing on what it has said were Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon; the outskirts of the capital, Beirut; and the eastern Bekaa Valley. On Sunday, Lebanon’s Health Ministry said that almost 400 people had been killed in the country so far.
Israel’s heavy bombardment carried over the weekend. The Israeli military on Sunday said that it had carried out more than 100 strikes across Lebanon over the previous day. Also on Sunday, Israel hit a hotel in central Beirut, killing at least four people, the Lebanese Health Ministry said. Israel said it had attacked commanders of the Quds Force, the arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps that oversees the country’s regional proxies.
At a small cemetery in Nabi Sheet on the grounds of the mosque, men used shovels, a jackhammer and pickaxes to dig graves on Sunday. Women, anguished, held pictures of loved ones. Israeli fighter jets thundered overhead, a reminder that there was no end in sight to the renewed warfare.
As one mass funeral ended, another convoy of cars, a few men on motorbikes firing Kalashnikov assault rifles in the air, headed down the street for another funeral. Mourners recounted seeing the fighting close at hand.
“We were face to face with them,” said Naiime Mousawi, a woman from the village dressed in black, said of the Israeli forces.
Some of the mourners shouted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” as men carried the corpses through the streets. “There is no God but Allah,” others chanted.
“We will stand here and support each other to the end, and we will not abandon our country,” said another mourner, Rima Hamze. “Nor will we leave our village.”
She called Israel “delusional” and appealed to God to have mercy on the dead Hezbollah fighters.
“We are not here to bow,” she said. “We will not kneel.”
The final burial on Sunday was for Ali Abed al Hussein al Khaffeji, a Hezbollah fighter whose body was placed on the ground with his face uncovered.
His brothers wept and clung to him until their relatives dragged them away. His infant child was placed briefly on his chest as family members explained to the crying child that he was “your father.”
And his widow knelt, crying and holding portraits of them together, as men passed her husband overhead and lowered him into the ground.
Abdi Latif Dahir reported from Beirut, Lebanon, Reham Mourshed reported from Damascus, Syria, and Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem.
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David M. Halbfinger reported from Jerusalem, and Fatima AbdulKarim and Natan Odenheimer from Khirbet Abu Falah in the West Bank.
Three Palestinians were killed — two of them shot in the head — when Israeli settlers raided their village in the northern West Bank on Sunday, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
The Israeli military said that the Israeli police had opened a criminal investigation into the violence in Khirbet Abu Falah, a village about two miles south of the Israeli settlement of Shiloh.
In all, six Palestinian civilians have been killed in the West Bank since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran just over a week ago, in what appears to be an intensification of settler violence while worldwide attention is focused on the fighting enveloping much of the Middle East.
On Monday, two Palestinian brothers were shot dead by Israeli fire in the village of Qaryut during a confrontation with settlers over land, according to local residents and the Palestinian Ministry of Health, an agency of the Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah, that administers much of the West Bank.
On Saturday in Wadi al-Rakhim, near Susya, in the southern West Bank, one Palestinian man was killed and his brother was critically injured, Palestinian and Israeli officials said.
The violence occurred after settlers brought sheep and cattle to graze on what the Palestinians say is their land and then tried to force the animals into the Palestinians’ houses, two witnesses said. When the villagers tried to drive the animals away, several settlers beat them with clubs, and one of them opened fire, according to one of the witnesses, Abed Shanaran.
Amir Shanaran, 28, was fatally shot in the neck. His brother Khaled Shanaran, 34, was shot in the abdomen but survived.
Several other Palestinians were also injured. Abed Shanaran said that his wife was run over, and her leg was broken, by another settler driving an all-terrain vehicle.
Israeli soldiers, police and border police responded to the scene. The military said that its initial review of the episode showed a reserve Israeli soldier had arrived earlier, after receiving a report of an attack, and had opened fire; it did not identify him as a settler.
It said that military police officers were investigating and would submit their findings to the military advocate general.
The violence on Sunday in Khirbet Abu Falah began at about 2 a.m., when at least 20 masked settlers wielding clubs raided the village, setting olive trees on fire and trying to burn at least one agricultural structure as well, according to witnesses who spoke to The New York Times.
When residents came out to drive the settlers away, shining lights on them and throwing rocks, the witnesses said, dozens more settlers showed up, some of them armed.
Thaer Farouq Hamayel, 24, and Farea Jawdat Hamayel, 57, were both fatally shot in the head, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, the witnesses and a local doctor who tried to save them.
When Israeli soldiers arrived, they fired tear gas canisters to disperse people involved, officials said. Muhammad Hassan Murra, 55, died after going into cardiac arrest while inhaling tear gas, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth, who heads Israel’s Central Command, which is responsible for the West Bank, said Sunday’s strife was “unacceptable.”
“There will be zero tolerance for civilians who take the law into their own hands,” he said in a statement. “These actions are dangerous, they do not represent the Jewish people or the State of Israel,” and they divert the military from its mission while “undermining security and stability in the area,” he said.
“Especially at a time when the I.D.F. is striking our bitter enemies, Iran and Hezbollah, with a firm hand,” General Bluth added, referring to the Israel Defense Forces, “we cannot allow reckless internal violence to undermine the rule of law and the security of the region.”
Mourners gathered for funerals in Nabi Sheet, Lebanon, after overnight Israeli air and ground raids. Most of those who died were identified as Hezbollah fighters and were wrapped in the group’s yellow and green flag.
The Israeli military struck several Iranian fuel sites, including oil storage depots, this weekend, which appeared to be the first attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure since the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran began.
Iran has significant reserves of oil and natural gas, and its energy industry is a crucial part of its economy, serving as both a critical export and a domestic energy supply. Continued attacks could make the Iranian government and the country as a whole more vulnerable.
“There is no doubt that attacks on energy infrastructure would push Iran into a serious crisis,” said Dalga Khatinoglu, an Iranian energy expert with Iran International, a London-based Persian and English-language news outlet.
In 2024, Iran generated $78 billion by exporting energy, including oil products and electricity, according to estimates from FGE, an energy consulting firm. China, which is closely aligned with Iran, buys nearly all of Iran’s oil exports.
Loss of even part of that revenue would be a blow to Iran’s economy, which was already in a deepening crisis before the war began. Combined with a plunging currency, the economic instability helped set off widespread protests that snowballed into broader challenges to the government and were violently suppressed.
Iran’s petroleum ministry said in a statement that multiple oil storage depots in the provinces of Tehran and Alborz had been targeted over the weekend.
The Israeli military said it had targeted the facilities because they were being used by Iran’s armed forces and called the attacks a “significant strike” aimed at dismantling the military infrastructure of the government.
Israel has long targeted Iran’s energy infrastructure. In 2024, Israel blew up two Iranian gas pipelines, affecting supplies that cover a majority of the country’s energy use. And during last year’s 12-day war, which included U.S. strikes, Israeli strikes damaged oil storage sites, refineries and power stations.
Following the war, Iran experienced a summer of daily power and water cuts, forcing schools, universities and government offices to close for extra days each week to reduce energy and water use.
The strikes further exacerbated already existing energy shortages, caused in part by dilapidated infrastructure, which the Iranian government blames on Western sanctions. Lack of capital and expertise has also limited development of oil and natural gas fields.
Widespread attacks on Iran’s energy infrastructure could create issues that could take decades to resolve, Mr. Khatinoglu said.
“Even if the regime were eventually overthrown, no future government would be able to maintain stability or meet the country’s basic needs with a devastated energy infrastructure,” he said. “In other words, destroying Iran’s oil and gas facilities would effectively block the path toward a democratic transition, because any future state would struggle simply to keep the country functioning.”
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