Trump wants say on Iran's next leader as war intensifies

DUBAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the right to join Iran in deciding its next leader as the war escalated on Thursday, with U.S. and Israeli jets ​hitting areas across the country and Gulf cities coming under renewed bombardment.

In a phone interview with Reuters, Trump said Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - a hardliner who has been considered ‌a favorite to succeed his father - was an unlikely choice.

"We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future," he said.

Trump also encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces to go on the offensive.

"I'd be all for it," said Trump, whose administration has had contact with Iranian Kurdish groups since the U.S.-Israeli strikes began. He would not say whether the United States would provide air cover for any Kurdish offensive.

The attack is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little public support and Americans concerned about the rise in ​gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern.

‘LEAVE THE KURDS ALONE’

Iraq’s First Lady, Shanaz Ibrahim Ahmed, has called on the Trump administration to “leave the Kurds alone,” urging the United States not to use Kurdish groups as proxies in its confrontation with Iran, reported Al Jazeera.

Her remarks came during events marking the 35th anniversary of the 1991 Kurdish uprising against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Ahmed made the comments amid reports suggesting that the United States has been attempting to recruit Kurdish fighters to take part in operations against Iranian military forces.

“We are not guns for hire,” she said, according to Iran’s English-language state broadcaster Press TV.

Ahmed, a prominent Kurdish political figure and the wife of Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, also reflected on the 1991 uprising in the city of Sulaimaniyah. She noted that during the revolt, Kurdish forces expected international support but ultimately did not receive assistance from the United States.

“No one came to our defence,” she said, recalling the events of that period.

ISRAELIS WARN TEHRAN RESIDENTS

On the war's sixth day, Iran launched a series of attacks on Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Fire crews in Bahrain extinguished a blaze ​at a refinery following a missile strike.

Two drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as an oil field operated by an American firm, security sources said.

The ⁠Israeli military warned residents to evacuate areas including eastern Tehran, while Iranian media reported blasts were heard in various parts of the capital. An air attack killed 17 people in a guest house on a road northwest of the capital, Iranian state ​television said.

"Today is worse than yesterday. They are striking northern Tehran. We have nowhere to go. It is like a war zone. Help us," said Mohammadreza, 36, by phone from Tehran, with a shaky voice as explosions rang out from what Israel described ​as its latest wave of strikes on Iranian government targets.

MANY MUNITIONS, IRAN'S ATTACKS DROPPED

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. forces in the Middle East, said that the U.S. has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.

"Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation," Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. "Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad."

Cooper said the U.S. had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World ​War Two aircraft carrier. He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran's missile production facilities.

Iran's ballistic missile attacks had decreased ​by 90% since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83% in that time frame, he said.

WARNING SIRENS BLARE IN MULTIPLE NATIONS

Azerbaijan on Thursday became the latest country drawn in, as it accused Iran of firing drones at its territory and ordered ‌its southern airspace ⁠closed for 12 hours. Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it had targeted its neighbor, but the episode underlined how rapidly the war has spread since the surprise U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that killed Khamenei on Saturday.

Along with the gleaming cities of the Gulf, in easy range of Iranian drones and missiles, Cyprus and Turkey have both been targeted. European nations have pledged to deploy ships to the eastern Mediterranean and hostilities have been seen as far afield as waters off Sri Lanka, where a U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship on Tuesday, killing 80 crew members.

In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country's south on the ​first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in ​Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut ⁠on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.

NETANYAHU SAYS 'MUCH WORK STILL LIES AHEAD'

Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.

On Thursday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said they ​had hit a U.S. tanker in the northern part of the Gulf and the vessel was on fire, the latest of numerous reports of such attacks.
Visiting an air force base ​in the south of the country, ⁠Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel's achievements so far in Iran had been "great" but that "much work still lies ahead."

Iran's foreign minister said Washington would "bitterly regret" the precedent it had set by sinking a ship in international waters without warning. A commander of the Revolutionary Guards, General Kioumars Heydari, told state TV: "We have decided to fight Americans wherever they are."

The body of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, killed in the first hours of the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in the first assassination of a country's top ruler by an airstrike, had been due ⁠to lie in ​state in a Tehran prayer hall from Wednesday evening to launch three days of mourning.

But the memorial, expected to draw many thousands of mourners
to ​the streets, was abruptly postponed.

Two sources familiar with Israel's battle plans said that Israel, having killed many Iranian leaders, was now planning to enter a second phase when it would target underground bunkers where Iran stores its missiles.