Israel carried out another wave of strikes on Tehran and Beirut on Wednesday while Iranian missiles continued to fly toward Israel and the Gulf as the war with Iran entered its fifth day.
Explosions were heard across Tehran in the early hours of the morning as the Israeli military announced “broad-scale strikes” on Iranian regime targets. Police stations and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) headquarters in the Kurdish regions of north-western Iran were also razed by strikes, Kurdish media reported.
Iran’s death toll soared, as estimates of those killed by strikes rose to 800 to 1,500 people in five days of war.
US and Israeli officials said the war was so far going better than they expected, but it was unclear what the end goal of their campaign was as they had offered contradictory aims. The Trump administration has said at various times that its goal was regime change, destroying Iran’s ballistic missile capacity and its navy, preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon, and putting a stop to its support for proxies across the region.
The US president, Donald Trump, said that some of the individuals he was considering as possible post-war leaders of Iran were killed in the opening days of the war. On Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of the late shah of Iran, Trump said he preferred “someone from within” Iran.
In Iran, funeral proceedings for the late head of state, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, started in Tehran on Wednesday morning. The body of Khamenei, killed in US-Israeli airstrikes on Sunday, is due to be on display for three days in a large compound in central Tehran for the public to view.
The funeral came as Iran’s senior clerics met to appoint a new supreme leader, a position that functions as both head of state and commander in chief of its vast military apparatus. The reported favoured candidate of clerics was Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of Ali Khamenei and preferred choice of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Analysts have said that Mojtaba Khamenei is a hardliner and his choice as successor would signal an increasing role for the IRGC in Iran. His appointment would signify a doubling down on the Iranian regime’s authoritarian response to domestic calls for reform. Frustration with the government had exploded into weeks-long protests earlier in the year, put down by a brutal government crackdown that left at least 7,000 dead.
Iran continued to strike US bases and installations across the Gulf, targeting the US embassy in Saudi Arabia and consulate in the United Arab Emirates. Iranian drones and missiles also struck US military radars and early warning systems in Bahrain and Qatar, unprecedented strikes for US bases in the region, which have enjoyed almost unchallenged primacy since the first Gulf war.
Israeli authorities said Iran launched missile barrages overnight and into the early morning at Israel, though most missiles were intercepted and no casualties were recorded.
Hezbollah also continued targeting Israel, shooting salvos of rockets and suicide drones at military bases and gatherings of troops in northern Israel. Hezbollah media also said it had struck three Israeli Merkava tanks that entered southern Lebanon, and downed an Israeli drone in Lebanese airspace.
In response, Israel carried out wide-ranging airstrikes across Lebanon, particularly in the southern suburbs of Beirut, with explosions rattling the capital into Wednesday morning. Israel also struck a hotel without warning in Hazmieh, south-east of Beirut, about 700 metres from the presidential palace.
Lebanon’s health ministry announced that six people were killed in the strikes, bringing the total death toll since Monday to 46. At least 58,000 people were displaced around the country by the strikes, and a state of panic descended on the country, where rumours of evacuation orders resulted in people fleeing from certain areas and buildings en masse, sometimes erroneously.
The US and Israel provided an optimistic assessment of their war so far, with Adm Brad Cooper, the head of US central command, saying the US has struck about 2,000 targets in the last few days. Cooper said the US has “severely degraded Iran’s air defences” and destroyed large weapons caches and ballistic missile launchers.
Israeli military spokesperson Brig Gen Effie Defrin said it had struck a building in the Iranian city of Qom, where religious authorities had been meeting to elect a new supreme leader. Iranian media claimed the building was empty when it was struck and Defrin said Israel was checking for casualties.
The Israeli military also said it struck sites in Iran that were being used to store ballistic missiles and that it had destroyed a secret underground facility used to develop “key components” for nuclear weapons. Iran has long maintained that it does not want a nuclear weapon and that its nuclear programme is for civilian use.
