US President Donald Trump on Thursday described Mojtaba Khamenei's leadership as "unacceptable", telling Axios he must be personally involved in choosing Iran's next leader.
Some members of Iran’s Assembly of Experts have protested plans to announce Mojtaba Khamenei as the next supreme leader, arguing it could amount to “hereditary leadership,” Iran International has learned.
Azerbaijan summoned Iran’s ambassador after drone attacks on the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan on Thursday.
Israel’s military said it was continuing strikes in central Tehran, targeting infrastructure linked to Iran’s ballistic missile system.
A 12,000-seat indoor arena in Tehran was hit in airstrikes by the US and Israel on Thursday morning.
Iran is seeking to escalate the conflict in the Middle East by attacking other countries in the region indiscriminately, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Thursday.
“Iran is an exporter of war,” Kallas told reporters. “Right now, the regime tries to drag as many countries into this war as possible.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed ongoing US operations to counter Iranian threats and other regional developments with Kuwait’s foreign minister, the State Department said on Thursday.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran is prepared to confront a potential US ground invasion and is not afraid of American troops entering the country.
Asked in an interview with NBC News whether he feared a US ground invasion, Araghchi replied: “No, we are waiting for them.”
“We are ready for this war,” he added.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States had failed to achieve a rapid military victory in the conflict, in a post on X addressed to US President Donald Trump.
“Plan A for a clean rapid military victory failed, Mr. President. Your Plan B will be even bigger failure,” Araghchi wrote.
Araghchi also said a potential diplomatic agreement had been lost after the conflict began, claiming negotiations had been making “significant progress” before the war and accusing what he called an “America Last” faction of derailing the talks.
“‘Israel First’ always means ‘America Last,’” he added.
President Donald Trump said the United States would accept assistance from any country to defend against Iranian.
“Certainly I'll take, you know, any assistance from any country,” Trump said in a telephone interview with Reuters when asked about the offer.
Earlier, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Kyiv had received a specific request from the United States for help dealing with drones in the Middle East.
The United States will have a role in choosing Iran's next leader, US President Donald Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview on Thursday.
"We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future," Reuters quoted Trump as saying.
"We don't have to go back every five years and do this again and again ... Somebody that's going to be great for the people, great for the country," he added.
Trump said it was very early in the process of picking a new leader but that Ali Khamenei's son Mojtaba was an unlikely choice, according to the report.
Asked about reports of US support for Kurdish forces launching an offensive into Iran,Trump said: “I think it’s wonderful if they want to do that.”
Israel's prime minister on Thursday hailed his country's “historic" cooperation with the United States in the campaign against Iran.
“We continue striking targets of the terrorist regime in Iran as well as terrorist elements in Lebanon. The achievements are significant, but the work is still great," Benjamin Netanyahu said in a visit the Ovda Israeli Air Force base in southern Israel housing both Israeli and American air crews.
Drone strikes targeted a camp belonging to an Iranian opposition group in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Reuters reported citing security sources.
Norway-based rights group Hengaw said Azadi Camp, a base of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI), was hit by four suicide drones.
The authority to appoint and dismiss military officials and to declare war or peace has been transferred to the Interim Leadership Council, consisting of President Masoud Pezeshkian, Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.
A missile attack struck eastern Tehran after the Israeli military warned residents to evacuate areas in the east and southeast of the Iranian capital, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reported.
Donald Trump acknowledged that Mojtaba Khamenei, son of slain supreme leader Ali Khamenei, is the most likely successor but made it clear he finds that outcome unacceptable and that he needs to be personally involved in selecting Iran's next leader, Axios reported citing an interview with the US president.
Trump added that he refuses to accept a new Iranian leader who would continue Khamenei's policies, which he said would force the US back to war "in five years."
"Khamenei's son is unacceptable to me. We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran," Axios quoted Trump as saying.
Explosions were heard in various parts of the Iranian capital Tehran, Iranian media reported.
Sirens rang out in Dubai on Thursday, Reuters reported citing witnesses.
US crude rose 5.5% to $78.77 a barrel while Brent crude climbed 3.64% to $84.36 per barrel on Thursday as more tankers came under attack in Persian Gulf waters amid the escalating war with Iran.
Crude prices have risen roughly 16% since the war began last week.
The United Arab Emirates’ air defense systems are intercepting incoming missiles and drones launched from Iran, the country’s defense ministry said on Thursday.
Iraqi pro-Iran militias threatened to target the interests of European countries that join US-Israeli strikes on Iran after a senior Kataeb Hezbollah officer was killed in an airstrike south of Baghdad.
Ali Hassan al-Furayji, a senior deputy in Kataeb Hezbollah, was killed along with two other operatives in the overnight strike, the group’s leader Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi said.
In a statement issued by the umbrella group Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the militias warned that any European country joining the “Zionist-American” campaign against Iran would see its forces and interests in Iraq and across the region become “legitimate targets.”
“The criminal Zionist-American enemy continues rallying its allies against the free people of the Islamic Republic and the region, begging some of the European countries to join,” the statement said.
“Any of those countries that do join in this battle… their forces and interests in Iraq and the region will be subject to legitimate targeting,” it added.
The Israeli military said its air force has struck hundreds of missile launch sites in Iran and taken more than 300 ballistic missile launchers out of operation since the start of its campaign against Iran.
