Iran has named three men for interim Leadership Council to pick next supreme leader
The Reuters news agency cited Iran’s state-run student news agency ISNA as saying Sunday that a longtime senior member of the Islamic Republic’s powerful Guardian Council, Alireza Arafi, had been appointed to the Leadership Council, a body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader’s role until the regime’s Assembly of Experts elects a replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei.
Arafi was to join President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeibe on the temporary Leadership Council, ISNA said.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate politician who was among the few very senior leaders to escape Saturday’s blistering strikes alive, will lead the country along with two other officials in a transitional period following the killing of Khamenei, Iranian state television said Sunday.
Earlier, an Iranian official said a leadership council would handle the late ayatollah’s duties until a successor is formally announced.
“In accordance with the constitution, a leadership council will be established to assume the responsibilities of the Supreme Leader until a successor is elected,” the secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said in a statement.
State news agency IRNA said that along with Pezeshkian, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and the head of Iran’s judiciary would be in charge until a new top leader is chosen.
If Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, named by the regime as one of three interim leaders of the country, was planning to distance the remnants of the theocracy from its slain supreme leader in a bid to survive the U.S.-Israeli assault, he showed no signs of that in his first public comments on Sunday.
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Iran’s interim government “considers blood and revenge against the perpetrators and leaders of this crime as the duty of its legitimate right,” Pezeshkian said in a statement shared online by Iranian state media.
“The assassination of the highest political authority of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the great Shiite world,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose funeral was being held Sunday in Tehran, “by the American-Zionist axis, is a declaration of open war with Muslims, especially Shiites in the world.”
He said Iran would “fulfill this great responsibility and duty” to retaliate against Israel and the U.S. “with all its might.”
Iranians were gathering Sunday for the funeral of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a day after he was killed along with about 40 other senior members of the Islamic Republic regime in joint U.S.-Israeli attacks that sparked a new war in the Middle East.
The remnants of the theocratic regime that has ruled Iran for almost 50 years announced an interim leadership, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, as many Iranians celebrated the decapitation of a brutal, repressive government, and protests also erupted against the U.S.-Israeli attacks.
There were no reports of American casualties after 24 hours of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, and those strikes continued Sunday along with retaliatory missile fire targeting U.S. bases across the Middle East. Iranian state media said at least 200 people were killed in the country, while Iran’s retaliatory strikes killed at least one person in Israel and one in Abu Dhabi, and wounded dozens more.
Israel’s military said Sunday that it had destroyed roughly half of Iran’s missile stockpiles, adding that the Islamic Republic had been producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles each month.
“During the operation, we destroyed approximately half of the Iranian regime’s missile stockpiles and prevented the production of at least 1,500 additional missiles,” military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a televised statement.
“The regime had recently been producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles per month and intended to increase production to hundreds per month.”
Lebanon’s Hezbollah vows to “confront aggression” of U.S. and Israel
The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah vowed Sunday to retaliate for the U.S. and Israeli war on its key backer, Iran.
“We will undertake our duty of confronting the aggression” of the U.S. and Israel, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a statement, according to the French news agency AFP. Qassem said Hezbollah would not leave “the field of honor and resistance.”
Israel has hammered Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent years, killing multiple leaders of the group and diminishing its significant fire power.
The group has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations.
CBS News producer Seyed Bathaei in Tehran said people were gathering Sunday in the Iranian capital ahead of the funeral Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The funeral was to be held at the University of Tehran.
Khamenei ruled over Iran from 1989 as the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic regime.
There were shouts of joy and celebrations in the streets of Tehran and other cities on Saturday when Israel and President Trump confirmed Khamenei had been killed in the U.S. and Israeli attacks. But there were also reports of protests in some parts of Iran on Sunday denouncing the war and calling for retribution.
State news agency IRNA said that along with Pezeshkian, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and the head of Iran’s judiciary would be in charge until a new top leader is chosen.
He said Iran would “fulfil this great responsibility and duty” to retaliate against Israel and the U.S. “with all its might.”
CBS News/Reuters
