The second week of the U.S.-Iran war began with reports that Iranian officials have chosen Mojtaba Khamenei, son of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the country’s new supreme leader, even as U.S. and Israeli airstrikes intensified over the weekend against Iranian military and energy infrastructure.
According to Axios, Iranian state media confirmed March 8 that Mojtaba will succeed his father, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike at the beginning of the war. NBC News reported that “Israel has threatened to target any successor” to Ali Khamenei, and President Donald Trump reportedly said Mojtaba “is not going to last long” without his approval.
As Zeale News previously reported, President Donald Trump had insisted he have a say in determining Iran’s next leader and ruled out Mojtaba as an “unacceptable” candidate.
According to The Guardian, Trump reaffirmed March 7 that he wants an “unconditional” surrender from Iran and did not rule out the possibility of deploying American forces to Iran.
“It’s where they cry uncle or when they can’t fight any longer and there’s nobody around to cry uncle — that could happen too,” Trump said.
Reuters reported that the war intensified March 8 as the U.S. and Israel shifted their focus to Iranian energy infrastructure. Strikes on oil storage facilities released clouds of black smoke over Tehran, prompting warnings about air quality. Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei posted on X that the new military operations constitute a “dangerous new phase” of the conflict that he said amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
According to Reuters, Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters that the facilities were fueling Iran’s strikes and said they were “a legal military target.”
Reuters reported March 8 that Iran continued missile and drone attacks on Gulf states throughout the weekend, killing two people in Kuwait and two more in Saudi Arabia. Iran also struck territories in the United Arab Emirates and a desalination plant in Bahrain, while Israel killed at least four people after striking a hotel in Beirut, Lebanon, in an attempt to target Iranian commanders in the city.
The U.S. confirmed March 8 that a seventh U.S. service member died after sustaining injuries during Iran’s initial attacks last week, according to The Hill. Six other U.S. Army Reserve soldiers were killed by an Iranian drone strike March 1. Their remains were brought to the U.S. in a dignified transfer ceremony at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware March 7, which both Trump and Vice President JD Vance attended.
The weekend also saw heightened scrutiny of the Feb. 28 bombing of an elementary girls’ school in Iran, which killed more than 180 people, many of them children, the New York Post reported. Multiple outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, reported evidence appears to indicate the U.S. may have been responsible for the strike. While Iran has blamed the U.S., Trump said March 7 he thinks Iran carried out the strike “Because they’re very inaccurate with their munitions.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt had stated March 5 that the Department of War was carrying out its own investigation into the strike on the school. According to the New York Post, she maintained that the U.S. did not carry out the strike, saying, “I would just tell you strongly, the United States of America does not target civilians, unlike the rogue Iranian regime, that … uses propaganda quite effectively.”