- Ayatollah Khamenei has named three senior clerics as potential successors if assassinated
- Khamenei lives in a deep bunker with electronic communications shut down for security
- Khamenei's son Mojtaba is not among the successor candidates, officials said
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has named three senior clerics as candidates to take his place if he is assassinated, The New York Times reported.
Living in a deep bunker, Khamenei has also instructed officials to shut down all electronic communications around him to make it harder to find him, the newspaper reported, quoting three Iranian officials familiar with Khamenei's emergency war plans.
The NYT in its report said: Ayatollah Khamenei's son Mojtaba, also a cleric and close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was rumoured to be a front-runner, is not among the candidates, the officials said. Iran's former conservative president, Ibrahim Raisi, was also considered a front-runner before he was killed in a helicopter crash in 2024.
On Friday, Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said Iran's Supreme Leader "can no longer be allowed to exist". The comment came after an Iranian missile hit a hospital in a town near Tel Aviv.
Mr Khamenei will be held accountable over the hospital strike, the minister said.
"The cowardly Iranian dictator sits in the depths of a fortified bunker and fires missiles at hospitals and residential buildings in Israel. These are war crimes of the most serious kind - and Khamenei will be held accountable for his crimes," Mr Katz said in a post on X, indicating Israel Defence Forces (IDF) will do everything they can to eliminate the Iranian leader.
"The Prime Minister and I have instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of attacks against strategic targets in Iran and against government targets in Tehran in order to remove threats to Israel and undermine the Ayatollah's regime," the Israeli defence minister said.
US stealth bombers were flying Saturday across the Pacific Ocean, according to tracking data and media reports, fuelling speculation over their intended mission as President Donald Trump considers joining Israel's attack on Iranian nuclear sites.
Multiple B-2 bomber aircraft left a base in the central US overnight and were later tracked flying off the California coast along with aerial refuelling jets, The New York Times and specialist plane tracking sites reported.
The B-2 is capable of carrying America's heaviest payloads, including the bunker-busting GBU-57, a 30,000-pound (13,607 kg) warhead capable of penetrating 200 feet (61 metres) underground before exploding.
With inputs from AFP
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