The clerical body that will choose Iran’s next supreme leader, succeeding the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has more or less reached a majority consensus, Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Mohammadmehdi Mirbaqeri said on Sunday.

The Mehr news agency quoted him as saying “some obstacles” still needed to be resolved regarding the process.

On Saturday, a senior cleric in the Assembly of Experts said its members would meet “within one day” to choose the leader.

NEXT SUPREME LEADER MUST ‘BE HATED BY THE ENEMY’

Two members of the panel, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir and Ahmad Alamolhoda, said the assembly had chosen a successor, according to Iranian media.

Alamolhoda said the head of the assembly’s secretariat, Ayatollah Hashem Hosseini Bushehri, is responsible for announcing the assembly’s decision.

Iranian media said the group had a minor disagreement over whether they would need to meet in person to issue their final decision, or bypass this formality.

Heidari Alekasir said in a video released by Nournews on Sunday that an in-person meeting was not possible under current conditions, suggesting at remote and written alternatives.

“This is an extraordinary situation, the assembly cannot meet in a plenary,” he said, adding that targeting the assembly would only benefit Iran’s enemies and “harm the revolution”.

Since the war began on February 28, Israeli and US strikes have killed dozens of officials and commanders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with Iranian media reporting on Tuesday that strikes flattened an auxiliary building of the Assembly of Experts in the city of Qom.

Heidari Alekasir said the candidate had been picked based on the late supreme leader’s advice that Iran’s top leader should “be hated by the enemy” instead of praised by it.

“Even the Great Satan (US) has mentioned his name,” the senior cleric said of the chosen successor, days after US President Donald Trump said Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was an “unacceptable” choice for him.

Trump said on Thursday that the younger Khamenei, a mid-ranking hard-line cleric, was the most likely successor, according to Axios, but warned he would reject such an option and that he should be personally involved in selecting Iran’s next leader.

Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was not in Tehran when his father was killed by air strikes early in the war, an Iranian source told Reuters on Wednesday.

He has close ties to Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and is one of the most influential figures in the Iranian clerical establishment, thanks to the influence he built behind the scenes and his role as his father’s gatekeeper, according to people familiar with the matter.

He has for years been seen as one of the top candidates to succeed the elder Khamenei, despite never holding a government position, aside from working in his father’s office.

Ali Khamenei ruled Iran from 1989 as supreme leader after serving as president for nearly eight years.

Mojtaba Khamenei was a particular target for criticism by protesters during unrest over the death of a young ​woman in police custody in 2022, after she ​was arrested for allegedly breaching the Islamic Republic’s strict dress codes.

He is seen as having leverage over Iran’s security apparatus, which has repressed several waves of protests in recent years.

The United States and Israel have broken international law with their attacks on Iran, Swiss Defense Minister Martin Pfister said in an interview published on Sunday, the latest European leader to raise concerns about the conflict.

Legal experts have said many countries will consider the attacks unjustified under the United Nations Charter, under which member countries must refrain from using force or the threat of force without U.N authorization or unless acting in self-defense.

“The Federal Council is of the opinion that the attack on Iran constitutes a violation of international law,” Pfister told SonntagsZeitung, referring to the Swiss cabinet.

“In our view it constitutes a violation on the prohibition of violence,” he added, calling on all parties involved to halt the fighting to protect the civilian population.

VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

Pfister said he was referring to all the countries not complying with the prohibition on violence, including the United States and Israel.

“The Americans and Israel have attacked Iran from the air. In doing so, they, like Iran, violated international law,” Pfister said.

The comments chime with those of German Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil, who told the RND newspaper network that he had “serious doubts that this war is legitimate under international law.”

Klingbeil also came out strongly against the idea of any potential German participation in the war: “I say clearly: this is not our war. We will not participate in this war.”

He said there was a “great danger that we are sliding ever deeper into a world where there are no longer any rules. We do not want to live in a world where only the law of the strongest applies.”

Spain has also denounced the US and Israeli bombings of Iran as reckless and ​illegal.

Israeli forces expanded their bombardment of Iran overnight, striking fuel depots near Tehran, while Bahrain said an Iranian attack had damaged one of its desalination plants, signaling a widening assault on vital infrastructure across the region.

As fighting escalated on day nine of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran, Tehran moved closer to naming a new supreme leader after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with every indication suggesting his powerful son Mojtaba could take charge.

Israel’s military threatened to kill any replacement for Khamenei, while US President Donald Trump said the war might only end once Iran’s military and rulers had been wiped out.

BLACK SMOKE HANGS OVER TEHRAN

Thick, choking black smoke hung over Tehran on Sunday, residents said, after strikes on oil storage facilities had lit up the night sky with plumes of orange flame.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said the large-scale attack marked a “dangerous new phase” of the conflict and amounted to a war crime.

“By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale,” he wrote on X.

Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters the depots were used to fuel Iran’s war effort, including producing or storing propellant for ballistic missiles. “They are a legal military target,” he said.

Shortly after the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his government would press on with the assault and strike Iran’s rulers “without mercy.”

“We have an organized plan with many surprises to destabilize the regime and enable change,” he said in a video statement. “We have many more targets.”

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he was not interested in negotiating an end to the conflict that has sent energy prices skyward, hurt business and snarled global travel.

“At some point, I don’t think there will be anybody left maybe to say, ‘We surrender,’” Trump said.

IRANIAN DRONES STRIKE GULF STATES

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries on Saturday and early Sunday, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.

Kuwait’s interior ministry said two of its officers were killed “while performing duties,” while the UAE said four migrant workers had died in Iranian attacks there so far.

Showing the intensity of the offensive, the UAE said air defense teams had knocked out 16 ballistic missiles and 113 drones fired towards the Gulf state on Sunday. One missile fell in the sea and four drones hit the country’s territories.

Bahrain said on Sunday that an Iranian drone attack had caused “material damage” to a desalination plant, though the country’s electricity and water authority said the strike had not disrupted water supplies.

It was the first time an Arab country has said Iran targeted a desalination facility during the conflict. On Saturday, Iran said a US attack had struck a freshwater desalination plant on its Qeshm Island, disrupting water supplies in 30 villages, calling it “a dangerous move with grave consequences.”

Saudi Arabia has told Tehran that continued Iranian attacks on the kingdom and its energy sector could push Riyadh to respond in kind, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

Lebanon has also been pulled into the conflict after the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah launched rockets and drones into Israel last week, with nearly 400 people killed by Israel over the past week, the health ministry said.

Israel killed at least four people when it struck a hotel in central Beirut on Sunday, saying it had targeted Iranian commanders operating in the city — the first such strike on the heart of the Lebanese capital — amid heavy bombardment of the southern suburbs and the country’s south and east.

IRAN GETTING CLOSER TO NAMING A NEW LEADER

The clerical body charged with choosing Iran’s next supreme leader could meet as soon as Sunday to name a successor to Khamenei, who was killed in an attack early in the conflict, Iranian media reported.

A majority consensus over the successor has more or less been reached, said Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Mohammad Mehdi Mirbaqeri, according to the Mehr news agency.

Another member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video that a candidate had been selected based on Khamenei’s guidance that Iran’s top leader should be “hated by the enemy.”

Two Iranian sources told Reuters last week that the clear favorite was Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who amassed power under his father as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control. Choosing him would signal that hardliners remain firmly in charge.

Trump has justified the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq by saying Tehran posed an imminent threat to the United States, without providing evidence. He has also said Iran was too close to being able to build a nuclear weapon.

The US and Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, Axios reported, citing four people with knowledge of the discussions.

Asked on Saturday about sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites, Trump said it was something they could do “later on.”

The US-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani.

Iranian attacks have killed 10 people in Israel. At least six US service members have been killed, with Iran saying on Sunday it had struck US bases in Kuwait. Israel said on Sunday that two of its soldiers were killed in southern Lebanon.