Israel launched a new wave of strikes on “regime infrastructure” in central Iran on Monday, hours after clerics in Tehran named Mojtaba Khamenei as the Islamic Republic’s new supreme leader, escalating a regional war already spilling across the Gulf and the Levant.
The Israeli military said its forces had “begun an additional wave of strikes on Iranian terror regime infrastructure in central Iran,” a rare public description of targets inside the country. The announcement came shortly after Israel reported strikes on Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and as Iranian state media showcased a projectile fired toward Israel bearing the slogan, “At Your Command, Sayyid Mojtaba.”
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The leadership handover in Tehran — nine days after U.S.-Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — was confirmed by the Assembly of Experts, which said it “did not hesitate for a minute” in naming his son as the country’s third supreme leader since 1979. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps quickly pledged “complete obedience and self-sacrifice” to Mojtaba Khamenei, a hardliner close to the Guards.
Inside Iran, Israeli strikes earlier hit five oil facilities in and around Tehran, killing at least four people and igniting fires that choked the skies with acrid smoke, local authorities said. Tehran’s governor told the IRNA news agency that fuel distribution was “temporarily interrupted,” and officials warned residents to stay indoors because of potentially toxic fumes; windows were blown out in neighborhoods near the blasts.
The cross-border barrages widened elsewhere. Hezbollah said its fighters engaged Israeli forces that landed by helicopter in eastern Lebanon near the Syrian border, the second such operation since the latest conflict erupted. In Bahrain, officials said an Iranian drone attack on the island of Sitra injured 32 people, including a 17-year-old girl with severe head and eye wounds and a two-month-old baby.
Explosions were heard in Doha as Qatar’s defense ministry said it intercepted a missile attack amid waves of Iranian drones and missiles launched in retaliation for earlier U.S. and Israeli strikes. Saudi Arabia reported destroying two waves of drones heading toward the Shaybah oil field, the United Arab Emirates said air defenses responded to “a missile threat,” and Kuwait reported another missile and drone attack and said its defenses were working to intercept it.
Energy markets reacted fast. Benchmark crude surged past $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine four years ago. Stocks opened sharply lower in Japan and South Korea, both reliant on imported fuel.
In Washington, the State Department ordered non-emergency staff to leave Saudi Arabia days after a drone struck the U.S. embassy, signaling that officials do not expect a rapid end to hostilities. The U.S. military said a service member died after being wounded in Saudi Arabia, the seventh American combat death of the war.
Iran’s Guards said they could sustain drone and missile operations across the Middle East for up to six months, while Israel warned any successor to Khamenei that “we will not hesitate to target you.” Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that Tehran would be “forced to respond” against neighbors if their territory is used to attack Iran.
U.S. President Donald Trump dismissed Mojtaba Khamenei as a “lightweight” and said the United States should have a say in the appointment, telling ABC News before the announcement, “If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long.” He has demanded Iran’s “unconditional surrender” even as he has also said the war is all but won, and he has not ruled out deploying U.S. ground troops.
The Assembly of Experts framed the succession as a defiant response to foreign pressure, saying it acted despite “the brutal aggression of the criminal America and the evil Zionist regime.” Iran was founded on opposition to dynastic rule after the Shah’s overthrow in 1979, but the clerical body’s move places another Khamenei at the apex of power with strong backing from the security apparatus.
With strikes trading across borders, civilian areas rattled, and oil infrastructure increasingly targeted, the risk of broader regional conflagration is rising. Monday’s Israeli announcement of strikes deep inside Iran — paired with Iran’s retaliatory launches and widening flashpoints across the Gulf — underscored how quickly the conflict is expanding beyond long-familiar proxy battlefields.
There was no immediate word on casualties from the latest Israeli wave of strikes in central Iran. But with oil prices spiking, Gulf capitals on alert, and both sides signaling endurance, officials across the region warned that the worst may still lie ahead.
By Abdiwahab Ahmed
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
