U.S.-Israeli war with Iran sees strikes intensify in Tehran on Day 5 as the conflict spreads

Iran’s 88 member Assembly of Experts ⁠is close to picking a new supreme leader to ⁠replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a ‌member of the assembly told Iranian state TV on Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency.

“The ⁠Supreme Leader will be identified in the ‌closest opportunity, we are close to a conclusion, however the situation in the ‌country is ‌a war situation,” ⁠Ayatollah Ahmad ‌Khatami ⁠told state TV.

The New York Times says his son Mojtaba Khamenei has emerged as a likely successor.

The Iranian-backed Houthi rebel movement, which controls a large portion of Yemen, was still mulling a decision on whether to engage directly in the war between its benefactors in Tehran and the U.S. and Israel.

On Sunday, the leader of the Houthis, a well-armed force long supplied with weapons and financial support by Iran’s theocratic rulers, delivered a speech voicing solidarity with Iran and declaring a “general mobilization” of the group’s armed forces, but offering no hints of any immediate plan to intervene in the war.

The group’s leaders are likely torn between their loyalty to Iran and the potential consequences of wading into a conflict with two of the world’s most powerful militaries.

Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad, a powerful figure within the group, told the Qatari network Al Jazeera on Tuesday night that the decision to join the fighting remained “subject to assessments by the supreme leadership and the competent authorities monitoring developments on the ground and responding in accordance with their responsibilities.”

“If American and Israeli aggression expands and reaches levels that threaten security and stability across the region more broadly, then every scenario will be on the table,” he said.

The largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar, was struck by an Iranian ballistic missile, Qatari officials said Wednesday. 

No casualties were reported.

Qatar was targeted by two ballistic missiles fired from Iran, the country’s ministry of defense said, but one was successfully intercepted.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez hit back Wednesday at President Trump’s criticisms of Madrid’s refusal to let U.S. planes use Spanish bases to attack Iran.

“The position of the government of Spain can be summed up in four words: no to war,” he said in a televised address, a day after Mr. Trump threatened to sever all trade with Spain.

“We will not be complicit in something that is harmful to the world and contrary to our values and interests, simply out of fear of retaliation,” Sanchez said.

“This is how humanity’s great disasters start. … You cannot play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions,” Sanchez said, according to the Reuters news agency.

CBS/AFP

Israel’s military said Wednesday that one of its fighter jets had shot down one of Iran’s over the Iranian capital as Israel stepped up attacks on Tehran.

“An Israeli Air Force F-35I ‘Adir’ fighter jet shot down an Iranian Air Force YAK-130 fighter jet a short while ago over the skies of Tehran. This is the first shootdown in history of a manned fighter aircraft by an F-35 ‘Adir’ fighter jet,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement shared on social media..

The “Adir” is the Israeli variant of the U.S.-made F-35 II Lightning, which is heavily customized by Israel’s military.

Israel’s military announced Wednesday morning the beginning of a new “broad wave of strikes targeting infrastructure of the Iranian terror regime in Tehran.” 

Israel Defense Forces spokesman Avichay Adraee said earlier that Israeli strikes were targeting dozens of military sites across Iran’s capital, including headquarters of the notorious Basij paramilitary force linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. He said missile launchers and defense systems were also being hit, along with supply and logistics facilities “affiliated with the regime’s ground forces.”

Adraee said the IDF would “intensify their strikes” on the Iranian regime’s infrastructure.

Iran’s semi-official student news agency ISNA reported loud explosions in eastern Tehran on Wednesday. 

Israeli military spokesman Avichay Adraee warned residents in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on Wednesday to evacuate an area near a specific building he said was affiliated with the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah.

“Urgent Alert for Those Present in the Southern Suburbs of Beirut, Especially in the Haret Hreik Neighborhood,” Adraee said in a social media post, sharing a map with a building highlighted in red. He said anyone in or within 300 meters (about 300 yards) of the building was “required to evacuate these buildings immediately and stay away from them.”

Israel has hammered alleged Hezbollah sites in Beirut and across southern Lebanon for days, and on Tuesday the IDF warned people in at least 80 southern Lebanese cities, towns and villages to evacuate and not return as it announced that troops had been sent across the border into the neighboring country “to create an additional layer of protection for our towns.” 

Video from the AFP news agency showed an airstrike had hit Hezbollah’s longtime stronghold in the southern Beirut suburbs, after a series of deadly raids that killed at least 11 people, according to local authorities. 

Iran will hold a three-day state funeral for supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed Saturday in the first wave of U.S.-Israeli strikes, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Wednesday.

“The faithful will be able to pay a final homage to the body of the martyred guide of the nation, by visiting the Imam Khomenei grand mosque” in Tehran, IRNA said, citing a statement from the country’sIslamic Development Coordination Council.

Khamenei will be buried in his home city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran. Arrangements for the funeral procession to Mashhad will ‌be announced when ‌they are ⁠finalized, state media added, according to the Reuters news agency.

The three day funeral was to begin Wednesday evening.

CBS/AFP 

At least 1,097 civilians have been killed in Iran since the U.S. and Israel launched their strikes on Saturday, sparking the ongoing war, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency said Wednesday.

“According to aggregated data since the outbreak of the conflict on February 28, the total number of reported civilian deaths has reached 1,097, including 181 children under the age of ten,” the organization said. “An additional 880 reported deaths are currently under review for verification and classification. The number of reported civilian injuries since February 28 has reached 5,402, including 100 children.”

CBS News’ producer in Tehran, Seyed Bathei, said there were unconfirmed reports circulating inside the country of thousands of fatalities as early as Sunday.

The U.S. and Israeli militaries declined again on Tuesday to respond to CBS News’ request for information on reports that dozens of the youngest victims of the war in Iran were killed in a strike that hit a girl’s elementary school in the southern city of Minab.

The New York Times reported, citing unnamed Iranian officials, that former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, had emerged as a front-runner to replace his father, with a decision by the country’s Assembly of Experts expected as soon as Wednesday morning.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has warned that any new supreme leader who carries on with Iran’s “plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States” and to “suppress the Iranian people,” will be an “an unequivocal target for elimination.”

On Tuesday, Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency issued a similar warning with a post on social media, in Iran’s primary Farsi language, that it did not “matter who is chosen today; his fate has been decreed. Only the Iranian nation will choose their future leader.” The message was accompanied by a graphic depicting senior Iranian clerics being toppled as dominoes.

The Reuters news agency cited two Iranian sources on Wednesday as saying Mojtaba Khamenei survived the most recent round of attacks on Tehran.

The head of content for Elon Musk’s X said Tuesday that the company would bar for 90 days members of the social media platform’s revenue-generating plan if they post “AI-generated videos of an armed conflict — without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI.”

“Today we are revising our Creator Revenue Sharing policies to maintain authenticity of content on Timeline and prevent manipulation of the program. During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technologies, it is trivial to create content that can mislead people,” said X product chief Nikita Bier in a post on the platform.

“Starting now, users who post AI-generated videos of an armed conflict—without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI—will be suspended from Creator Revenue Sharing for 90 days. Subsequent violations will result in a permanent suspension from the program.”