Israeli forces expanded their bombardment of Iran overnight, striking fuel ​depots near Tehran, while Bahrain said an Iranian attack had damaged one of its desalination plants, signalling a widening assault on vital infrastructure across the region.

As the fighting escalated on day nine of ‌the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, Tehran moved closer to naming a new supreme leader after the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with every indication suggesting his powerful son could take charge.

Israel’s military threatened to kill any replacement for Khamenei, while U.S. President Donald Trump said the war might only end once Iran’s military and rulers had been wiped out.

The governments of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reported Iranian drone attacks in their countries on Saturday and early Sunday, with a huge fire engulfing a government office block in Kuwait.

Kuwait’s interior ministry said two of its officers were killed “while performing duties”.

Bahrain said on Sunday that an Iranian drone attack had caused “material damage” to a desalination plant, though the country’s electricity and water authority said the strike had not disrupted water supplies.

Video from Tehran showed thick, choking black smoke hanging over the city early on Sunday after strikes on oil storage facilities, had lit up the night sky with plumes of orange flame.

An Israeli ​source said the fuel was used to manufacture and develop weapons and to operate military bases. Iran’s oil distribution company said four of its employees were killed in the blitz, adding that rationing would be ​introduced temporarily in some areas “to ensure fair and sustainable supplies”.

Shortly after the attack, which appeared to mark a new phase in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ⁠said his government would press on with the assault and strike Iran’s rulers “without mercy”.

“We have an organised plan with many surprises to destabilise the regime and enable change,” he said in a video statement. “We have many more targets.”

Trump told ​reporters aboard Air Force One that he was not interested in negotiating an end to the conflict that has sent energy prices skyward, hurt business and snarled global travel.

“At some point, I don’t think there will be anybody left ​maybe to say, ‘We surrender’,” Trump said.

It was the first time an ​Arab country has said Iran targeted a desalination facility during the conflict. On Saturday, Iran said a U.S. attack had struck a freshwater desalination plant on its Qeshm Island, disrupting water supplies in 30 villages, calling it “a dangerous move ​with grave consequences”.

Saudi Arabia has told Tehran that continued Iranian attacks on the kingdom and its energy sector could push Riyadh to respond in kind, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

In an apparent attempt to cool anger across the Gulf, Iran’s President ‌Masoud Pezeshkian apologised ⁠to neighbouring states for its attacks on U.S. bases in those countries on Saturday.

His comments faced backlash from some hardliners in Iran, prompting his office to reiterate Iran’s military would respond firmly to attacks from U.S. facilities.

The clerical body charged with choosing Iran’s next supreme leader could meet as soon as Sunday to name a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an attack early in the conflict, Iranian media reported.

A majority consensus over the successor has more or less been reached, said Assembly of Experts member Ayatollah Mohammadmehdi Mirbaqeri, according to the Mehr news agency.

Another member of the council, Ayatollah Mohsen Heidari Alekasir, said in a video that a candidate had been ​selected based on Khamenei’s guidance that Iran’s top leader ​should be “hated by the enemy”.

Two Iranian sources told Reuters ⁠last week that the clear favourite was Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who amassed power under his father as a senior figure in the security forces and the vast business empire they control. Choosing him would send a signal that hardliners were still firmly in charge.

Trump has justified the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion ​of Iraq by saying Tehran posed an imminent threat to the United States, without providing evidence. He has also said Iran was too close to being able to ​build a nuclear weapon.

The U.S. and ⁠Israel have discussed sending special forces into Iran to secure its stockpile of highly enriched uranium at a later stage of the war, Axios reported, citing four people with knowledge of the discussions.

Asked about the possibility of sending ground troops to secure nuclear sites on Saturday, Trump said it was something they could do “later on.”

The U.S.-Israeli attacks have killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians and wounded thousands, according to Iran’s U.N. ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani.

Iranian attacks have killed 10 people in Israel. At least ⁠six U.S. service members ​have been killed, with Iran saying on Sunday it had struck U.S. bases in Kuwait.

Lebanon has also been pulled into the conflict after ​the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah fired rockets and drones into Israel last week.

At least four people were killed when Israel hit a hotel building in central Beirut early on Sunday, with Israel saying it had targeted Iranian commanders operating in the Lebanese capital. It was the first such strike ​in the heart of Beirut, prompting fears Israel would expand its attacks to areas beyond where Hezbollah traditionally operates.

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.

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, opens new tab 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.

A Pakistani man accused of planning to kill President Donald Trump told jurors on Wednesday that he did not willingly work with Iran’s elite ​Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps to devise the plot, media said.

The Justice ‌Department accused Asif Merchant of trying to recruit people in the United States in the plan targeting Trump and other U.S. politicians in retaliation for Washington’s killing of the ​Corps’ top commander, Qassem Soleimani, Reuters reported.

The Corps has a central role in Iran, with ​its combination of military and economic power and an intelligence ⁠network.

“I was not wanting to do this so willingly,” the New York ​Times quoted Merchant as telling a court during his trial for terrorism and ​murder-for-hire charges, adding that he participated to protect his family in Tehran.

Prosecutors rejected Merchant’s claim, citing a “lack of evidentiary support for a true duress or coercion,” according to a ​letter sent on Tuesday to the judge in the case dating from ​2024.

According to the newspaper, Merchant said he had never been ordered to kill a specific ‌person ⁠but that his Iranian handler named three people in the course of conversations in the Iranian capital.

In addition to Trump, these were Joe Biden, the president at the time; Nikki Haley, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for ​the 2024 presidential ​election.

Lawyers for Merchant ⁠did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately comment.

The trial started last ​week, days before Trump ordered strikes on Iran carried out ​with Israel ⁠that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top officials in the Middle Eastern nation.

Trump cited an alleged Iranian plot when he spoke to ABC News on ⁠Sunday about ​a joint U.S.-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei, ​saying, “I got him before he got me.”

Tehran has denied accusations that it targeted Trump and other U.S. ​officials.