Na wa o. Your case is like that of the kidnapped Ondo State local council secretary who was always singing the praises of the current administration on social media, even going as far as praising Tinubu for effectively fighting insecurity.
In the same way that our Ondo State hero is now seeking for our financial assistance to raise ransom money, how do we know that if we bail the two of you out, you will not just simply go back to singing the praises of the people who are responsible for your predicament?
Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, suffered a fractured foot and other minor injuries on the first day of the US and Israel’s bombardment campaign, a source familiar with the situation told CNN.
In addition to his injured foot, Khamenei, 56, received a bruise around his left eye, as well as minor lacerations to his face, the source said.
An Israeli source previously told CNN that Khamenei was injured in an assassination attempt last week, and rumors of his injuries have swirled for days.
Iran’s ambassador to Cyprus, Alireza Salarian, told the Guardian newspaper on Wednesday that Khamenei was injured in the same airstrike that killed his father, the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, along with five other members of the family.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public nor heard from in the days since the announcement of his appointment to the country’s highest office, a fact explained by his injuries, Salarian said.
“I don’t think he is comfortable (in any condition) to give a speech,” Salarian told the Guardian.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian’s son Yousef said early Wednesday that he had heard Khamenei was injured, telling the state-affiliated Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that the new supreme leader is “safe and there are no concerns.”
Iranian state media and propaganda networks have made extensive use of the little archival footage that exists of Mojtaba Khamenei in the meantime, filling in any gaps of footage with AI-generated images.
When Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced that he had been chosen to replace his father, state media released a four-minute documentary clip recounting his life: modest origins, seminary studies in the holy city of Qom, his time fighting in the Iran-Iraq war as a teenager and, finally, his new role as heir to his “martyred” father.
While Mojtaba Khamenei kept a low profile before becoming the most powerful person in Iran, he was nonetheless a central figure in the vast network of influence his that father, Ali Khamenei, cultivated during his decades-long tenure as supreme leader. In 2021, photos were even published on social media showing Iranians passing out posters promoting Mojtaba Khamenei as an heir to his father.
The new supreme leader, while not a high-ranking cleric, is a close associate of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IGRC) and the regime’s economic elite. Observers believe he is just as, if not more, hard-line as his father was.
Before Mojtaba Khamenei’s confirmation as supreme leader, Maha Yahya, director of the Beirut-based Carnegie Middle East Center, told CNN that his new role could be seen as a message from the regime to the United States and Israel that military pressure is “not going to get us to shift position.”
The younger Khamenei was even a focus of protesters’ rage during demonstrations against the outcome of the 2009 Iranian elections, in which the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was reelected to a second term.
Many in the country believe Khamenei had a hand in the widely disputed final results. Before the uprising was crushed and Iran’s domestic opposition obliterated, protesters chanted in Farsi, “Mojtaba bemiri Rahbari ro Nabini,” or “Mojtaba may you die so you don’t assume the leadership role.”
Though a little-known figure outside Iran until he replaced his father, Khamenei had previously received scrutiny from US officials. In 2019, the US Treasury sanctioned Khamenei for allegedly working closely with the IRGC “to advance his father’s destabilizing regional ambitions and oppressive domestic objectives.”
US President Donald Trump, for his part, has expressed disapproval of Iran’s new supreme leader, calling him an “unacceptable” choice.
The International Energy Agency said on Wednesday its member countries would unlock 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves to ease the impact of the Middle East war, the biggest such release ever.
The coordinated release was the sixth in the history of the organisation, which was created to coordinate responses to major supply disruptions after the 1973 oil crisis.
“IEA countries have unanimously decided to launch the largest-ever release of emergency oil stocks in our agency’s history. IEA countries will be making 400 million barrels of oil available,” IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol told reporters.
“This is a major action aiming to alleviate the immediate impacts of the disruption in markets,” he added.
“But to be clear, the most important thing for a return to stable flows of oil and gas is the resumption of transit through the Strait of Hormuz.”
The IEA-coordinated release exceeded the 182 million barrels of oil that member countries of the Paris-based global energy body released in 2022 when Russian leader Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
The 32-member IEA said that the emergency stocks will be made available “over a timeframe that is appropriate to the national circumstances of each member country and will be supplemented by additional emergency measures by some countries”.
The crude market has been hit by wild volatility since the United States and Israel began striking Iran at the end of last month, with Tehran retaliating by attacking targets across the oil-rich Gulf and effectively shutting down the Strait of Hormuz.
The Strait normally carries about 20 per cent of the world’s oil and gas supplies.
– G7 coordination with Gulf countries –
The IEA announcement came as leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies discussed the economic fallout from the US-Israeli war with Iran, now into its second week, at a video conference meeting chaired by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the G7 advanced economies, urged US President Donald Trump and other G7 leaders to coordinate to open the strait “as soon as possible.”
At the same time, he said that the strait being choked “in no way” justify lifting the sanctions imposed on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
“The consensus was that we should not change our position on Russia and should maintain our efforts on Ukraine,” said Macron.
Macron said the G7 would coordinate moves with Gulf countries “in coming days”.
Macron has said France and its allies are preparing a “defensive” mission to reopen the strategically vital strait.
Earlier Wednesday, Japan — whose strategic oil reserves are among the world’s largest — and Germany said they would tap into their oil reserves.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said Japan would release reserves as early as Monday, while Germany’s Economy and Energy Minister Katherina Reiche said her country planned to do the same, without specifying a date.
Reiche said a total of 2.4 million tons would be released.
US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the transit problem was “temporary.”
“What we have here is not a shortage of energy in the world. We’ve got a transit problem,” he said.
– ‘Pumping less oil’ –
Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said 400 million barrels would still be a “meagre” amount compared with the roughly 45 million barrels that IEA countries consume every day.
“It would therefore be a temporary fix,” she said.
“The Middle East is now pumping less oil — around six per cent less — in reaction to the Iran war.”
Countries around the world have been left scrambling in response to the oil price spikes.
Bangladesh has deployed the army to guard oil depots, India has imposed tighter controls over natural and cooking gas, and French officials conducted inspections at petrol stations and fined those found to be inflating prices.
Greece will cap profit margins on gasoline and a range of foodstuffs for three months, the prime minister said.
IEA country members hold over 1.2 billion barrels of public emergency oil stocks, with a further 600 million barrels of industry stocks held under government mandates.
A 35-year-old woman from Orlando, Florida has been charged with attempted murder following a shooting at the home of pop superstar Rihanna, prosecutors said.
Ivanna Lisette Ortiz is accused of firing a semiautomatic rifle at the singer's Los Angeles mansion at 13:15 local time (21:15 GMT) on Sunday.
No one was injured in the shooting. Ortiz is being held on bail set at $1.875m (£1.395m), facing a possible life sentence.
Police are investigating the motive for the attack that took place while Rihanna and her rapper partner A$AP Rocky were at the home, the BBC's US news partner CBS reports.
Ortiz has been accused of driving up to the front of the house and firing the weapon multiple times at it, before fleeing.
Her white Tesla was located about eight miles (12km) from the singer's home at the Sherman Oaks Galleria shopping centre, where the woman was taken into custody.
"Opening fire in any populated neighbourhood is extremely dangerous, puts lives at risk and will be fully prosecuted," Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan J. Hochman said.
Prosecutors noted that there were people in Rihanna's home as well as the property adjacent to it at the time of the shooting.
"This careless violence will not be tolerated in our community. Such shooters will find their next destination to be our jails and prisons," Hochman added.
Ortiz faces multiple other charges including ten felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm and three felony counts of shooting at an inhabited dwelling or camper.
According to CBS, the LAPD has found a series of posts on her social media mentioning Rihanna.
In one post on X, Ortiz wrote: "Are you there? ... say something to me directly instead of sneaking around like you talking to me where I'm not at."
Video from the singer's address shows suitcases being wheeled away on the day after the shooting.
The Barbados-born celebrity, whose full name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, rose to prominence in the 2000s with hits like Pon de Replay and Umbrella.
She shares three children with partner A$AP Rocky, who last February was found not guilty of firing a gun at a former friend, in a trial that saw Rihanna bring her two sons to court.
After emerging unscathed from the strike that killed the supreme leader, rumours that Esmail Qaani is an Israeli spy grow.
Gen Esmail Qaani has gained a reputation over the last two years of surviving attacks ‘while everyone around him dies’
The fate of one of Iran’s most powerful military figures remains unknown after he became the focus of rumours that he was an Israeli spy.
Gen Esmail Qaani, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is said to have aroused suspicion after emerging unscathed from the air strike at the start of the war that killed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, as well as numerous top aides.
Speculation is rife in the Middle East that he is under house arrest or has been executed.
As head of the Quds Force, one of the five branches of the IRGC, the 68-year-old has been responsible for exporting Iranian terror by training and equipping Islamic revolutionary groups outside Iran since 2020.
He replaced Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated on Donald Trump’s orders in the last month of his first term in office.
In the past week, articles have pointed to an alleged trend of Gen Qaani escaping incidents that have killed others.
One said the general had “spent the past two years accumulating a reputation for his extraordinary ability to walk away unscathed while everyone around him dies”.
One of the incidents involved the wholesale targeting of IRGC top brass in Israel’s 12-day war against Iran in June, when he was initially thought to have been killed, but then emerged at a public event wearing civilian clothes and a baseball cap. This echoed a similar sequence of events in October 2024.
Heightening the gossip were reports that Israel had published a list of Iranian and Iran-linked officials it wanted to eliminate in the current round of fighting. Over the weekend that marked the start of the war, that list was declared “complete”, but Gen Qaani’s name was not included.
A Persian-language account on X, which is believed to be run by Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, took the step of denying that Gen Qaani was one of its spies last year.
Since the strike that killed Khamenei nine days ago, numerous social media accounts of dubious provenance have alleged that Gen Qaani was a long-term Israeli asset, some of which have superimposed his head on an IDF uniform.
There are also reports that Gen Qaani is being interrogated by the IRGC’s internal security service.
In a war that figures in the US such as Pete Hegseth seem determined to portray as an action movie, this story bears the genuine hallmarks of an espionage thriller.
One Israeli source with a background in intelligence said: “Ultimately, no one knows.
“Perhaps the truth is that he is what he claims to be, loyal to the Iranian regime, and all this chatter is part of an operation to undermine him and the work he does attacking Israel.”
The speculation takes place against the backdrop of what appears to be a stunning Israeli penetration of Iran’s security state.
Some indication has emerged of how they pulled off the assassination of Khamenei, including by hacking the feed from Tehran’s traffic cameras.
The Mossad was also said to be operating on the ground during the war in June to help take out anti-aircraft defences.
It is not known whether any Israeli agents have been inside Iran in the build-up to the current conflict.
However, former operatives have previously said that the Mossad is now able to extract a large amount of data from Iran digitally, including by persuading Iranians to pass it on to them, unaware that they are dealing with Israeli intelligence.
Gen Qaani is reportedly viewed as a less visionary and transformational figure than Soleimani within IRGC circles.
However, the Iran-Iraq war veteran was seen as loyal to the regime by bringing decades of experience to his role exporting terror to the region.
An old and unrelated video is being shared, claiming that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared in public after assassination rumours
Amid the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, a joint strike by the United States and Israel on Iran on 28 February 2026 killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with several senior Iranian officials. These included Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Chief of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Abdolrahim Mousavi, among other high-ranking leaders.
In this context, several claims began circulating on social media stating that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was also killed in the strikes. However, no official confirmation from Iranian authorities or Israel was found regarding his death, and some Iranian media outlets denied these claims.
Amid these rumours, a video of Ahmadinejad meeting and hugging people in public began circulating on social media, with users claiming that the former president is still alive and appearing in public. Let’s examine the truth behind this viral video.
Claim: The viral video shows former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appearing in public after reports claimed he was killed in the US–Israel strikes on Iran.
Fact: The video is old and unrelated to the recent conflict. It shows Ahmadinejad attending the funeral of Dr. Seyyed Hassan Mousavi’s mother, and the visuals predate the US–Israel strikes on Iran.
Hence the claims is MISLEADING.
To verify the claim, we conducted a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same clip uploaded from a different angle on a YouTube channel named @mehrefarda on 15 February 2026, which predates the US–Israel joint strike on Iran.
The video caption states that it shows Dr Mahmoud Ahmadinejad attending the funeral and burial ceremony of Dr Seyyed Hassan Mousavi’s mother. The description further mentions that the video was originally recorded on 18 January 2025, but was uploaded later due to an internet outage during the ceremony
In the viral video, an elderly man wearing a green shirt is seen shaking hands with and hugging Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, followed by another man in a blue shirt doing the same.
These exact visuals appear in the final portion of the original YouTube video. The footage then shows Ahmadinejad walking toward a graveyard to visit the tomb, confirming that he was attending the funeral ceremony. This indicates that the viral clip predates the recent incident. However, we could not independently verify whether he is alive.
To sum up, an unrelated video is being shared claiming that former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared in public after assassination rumours.
I barely know Daniel Bwala. He came to the forefront of national media attention in 2022 because of his impassioned opposition to the choice of Kashim Shettima as Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s running mate. But beyond his public break from the APC, he came across to me as a voluble, ignorant and opportunistic careerist, not because of his stance on Tinubu’s choice of a Muslim running mate, but because of what struck me as his facileness and self-seeking obsessions.
His dramatic volte-face from being a virulent Tinubu critic to a fawning, vicious Tinubu battering ram has proven that my hunch about him was accurate.
Yet I felt sorry watching him eaten alive by Mehdi Hassan on Al Jazeera on Friday, March 6. He willingly participated in the detonation of what remained of his credibility before the world. In the process, he did incalculable reputational damage to the Tinubu government he is paid to protect.
What viewers saw on Mehdi Hasan’s Head to Head was the spectacle of a presidential spokesman arriving unarmed to a firefight he should have anticipated, then trying to fight back with nervous laughter, evasions, amnesia and the old Nigerian official fallback of whataboutery.
His evasiveness and prevarications were so unnervingly apparent that Hasan was compelled to say, “At the weekend, you put out a video to music of you and your team researching and prepping for this show and...now every time I ask you say you are not aware of that....what were you researching in that video...?"
The most striking thing about Bwala’s performance was not that he was challenged hard. Anyone who agrees to sit opposite Mehdi Hasan knows the interview will not be a tea party. The disgrace was that Bwala looked startled by facts he should have mastered before stepping into the studio.
On insecurity, on corruption, on Tinubu’s own words and even on his own prior statements, he oscillated between denial, deflection and the sort of desperate verbal stalling that makes a government look smaller than its critics claim it is.
The problem was not that Daniel Bwala appeared lazy or obviously unprepared. In fact, he looked prepared, even thoroughly rehearsed and robotic. He had the posture, the confidence and the choreographed mannerisms of a man who believed he had done his homework. But his carefully planned performances collapsed pitifully when they collided with Hasan’s hard, cold, indisputable facts.
Political wordplay can sometimes survive on friendly platforms or on Nigeria’s tame media spaces where assertion is mistaken for argument. It cannot survive a fact-driven, scorched-earthed, bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred interrogation. Facts are facts. And Mehdi Hasan is a man of facts. He has the rare gift of making heavy, devastating facts sound almost light in conversation. That quality made Bwala’s evasions even more painful to watch.
The exchange over “context” illustrated this perfectly. When confronted with evidence that insecurity had worsened under the current administration, Bwala retreated to the mantra that “context matters.” Yet the context he invoked was little more than semantic fog and intentional, self-impressed verbal obfuscation.
Hasan, by contrast, used numbers and reports that any government spokesman worth the title should already know. The moment became absurd when Bwala insisted that the context of worsening statistics was that things were not getting worse. The dialogue is worth reproducing:
Hasan: You are failing. Amnesty International says you are failing at security. The numbers don't lie.
Bwala: It's unfortunate and as a government working day and night that situation. I don't agree to [sic] the fact that it's getting worse.
Hasan: How can it not get worse if more people die in one year than the previous year?
Bwala: Context matters.
Hasan: What's the context?
Bwala: The context is not getting worse.
Hasan: What!
Bwala: Yes.
Hasan: The context is not getting worse?
Bwala: The context is that it is not getting worse, because you, you see this is a water [sic], right?....
Forget, for now, Bwala’s inexcusably horrible grammar, especially for a lawyer, his tortured logic and his buffoonish articulation. That was some cringeworthy self-own.
The numbers he tried to wave away are not inventions of hostile foreigners with an anti-Nigerian agenda. Nigeria’s own National Human Rights Commission reported that at least 2,266 people were killed by bandits or insurgents in the first half of 2025 alone.
Conflict monitoring groups have recorded even higher totals for the full year. Amnesty International has repeatedly warned that violence has intensified since Tinubu assumed office. In other words, Hasan’s central point was merely a summary of documented reality.
This is what made Bwala’s performance so damaging. He was not merely disputing interpretations. He was disputing arithmetic. When a spokesman tells the world that things are not getting worse while credible datasets show that they are, he is insulting the intelligence of everyone listening, especially Nigerians who bury the dead, pay ransoms, withdraw their children from schools and avoid highways after dark.
But the interview’s most morally satisfying feature was Hasan’s methodical dismantling of Bwala’s denials about his own past words. Bwala tried the trite and tired Nigerian political trick of pretending that statements made in opposition exist in a separate moral universe from statements made in office. Hasan did not let him get away with it.
Bwala denied on air having said Tinubu and his camp created a militia and threatened him. Yet those remarks were widely reported during the 2023 campaign. He also denied saying that bullion vans seen at Tinubu’s Bourdillon residence were ostensibly for vote buying, despite the fact that the comments were carried by multiple Nigerian outlets at the time. So, when Bwala asked who said such things, the answer was brutally simple. Daniel Bwala said them.
The same pattern appeared on corruption. Tinubu did in fact proclaim at a public event that Nigeria had “no more corruption,” a line that was widely reported and widely mocked and that provoked Omoyele Sowore to call Tinubu a “criminal” for which he is being tried now. Bwala’s attempt to rescue the statement by retroactively inventing a narrower meaning was not the contextual clarification he wanted it to be. It was out-and-out mendacity.
On the appointment of Abubakar Bagudu as minister of budget and economic planning, Bwala again reached for evasion. Yet the record is clear that Bagudu returned about $163 million linked to the Abacha loot investigations in a settlement with authorities. Whether or not one calls that a conviction, the public controversy around his appointment cannot honestly be dismissed as drunken rumor.
Then there is the overarching irony that electrified the interview. Bwala was confronted with the fossil record of his own mouth. Before joining Tinubu’s camp, he publicly attacked the same man over allegations of corruption, the drug forfeiture case in the United States and the bullion van episode. What Hasan exposed was the speed with which partisan appetite can digest prior conviction and call the indigestion growth.
Bwala’s performance mattered for a reason larger than one man’s embarrassment. It showed in concentrated form the disease afflicting Nigerian political communication. Too many spokesmen believe their job is not to illuminate but to survive the segment. So, they deny what is documented, nervously laugh when cornered, compare Nigeria with unrelated countries, abuse the word “context” and hope that shamelessness can do the work preparation cannot.
Daniel Bwala went to London to defend the government. Instead, he displayed its worst habits: contempt for evidence, indifference to contradiction and the assumption that public memory is so short that a man can disown his own recorded words without consequence.
Mehdi Hasan did not disgrace him. Bwala did that himself. Hasan merely kept the receipts.
Israel’s military said on Saturday it had struck 16 Iranian aircraft at Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport, which it said was a key hub for the Islamic republic’s Revolutionary Guards.
“Overnight, the Israeli Air Force… completed a broad wave of strikes across Tehran and on military infrastructure located at the ‘Merabad Airport’ in Tehran”, it said in a statement.
“16 aircraft of the ‘Quds Force’ unit of the IRGC were precisely dismantled”, it said, referring to the branch of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that oversees its foreign operations.
The military accused the Guards of using Mehrabad International Airport, one of two that serve the capital, to send cash and weapons to its proxies in the Middle East, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“Also targeted were several Iranian fighter jets that posed a threat to Israeli Air Force aircraft operating in Iranian airspace”, the statement added.
Earlier on Saturday, Israel’s military said more than 80 fighter jets completed a wave of strikes on Iranian military sites, missile launchers and other targets in Tehran and central Iran on the same day.
“Over 80 Israeli Air Force fighter jets… completed an additional wave of strikes targeting infrastructure belonging to the Iranian terror regime,” the military said in a statement.
In one of the biggest raids announced by Israel since the regional war began on February 28, the statement said that jets hit a military academy belonging to the Revolutionary Guards which “was being used as an emergency asset”.
It said the facility was being used for military operations, making it “a lawful military objective”.
Other targets included an underground command centre and missile storage facility as well as launch sites, “in order to reduce the scope of fire directed at the territory of the State of Israel”, the statement said.
When Israel joined the United States in a massive wave of strikes on Iran at the start of the war, the Israeli military said 200 fighter jets took part in the raids, calling it the largest in the air force’s history.
Retired paratrooper David Turjman steps out of the betting shop on Qiryat Shemona’s all-but deserted high street as the column of Merkava main battle tanks thunder past.
“Kul hayom,” he mutters, nodding his head approvingly. It means “all day” in Hebrew.
All day in this picturesque but dangerous part of Israel, the roads have trembled with the vibration of armour heading north towards Lebanon and Hezbollah.
As well as tanks, The Telegraph saw the movement of heavy artillery pieces, military bulldozers and countless trucks carrying shells. Sounds included the wail of sirens, the rush of interceptor rockets tearing up out of the undergrowth and the thud of high explosives, on the ground and in the air.
It points to a potential major Israeli push deep into southern Lebanon, and a full-scale ground war, just as the Jewish state has been trying to topple the Iranian regime from the air.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers crossed the border on Tuesday, two days after Hezbollah broke a period of silence by firing rockets into Israel, in revenge for the killing of Ali Khamenei. It is a limited tactical operation so far – an incursion of a few hundred metres to secure high ground.
This has been accompanied by a substantial programme of air strikes, including the bombardment of Beirut, forcing the evacuation of 300,000 civilians from the south.
The big question is how far Israel will go.
A senior IDF officer in Northern Command told The Telegraph he would have enough troops and equipment in place for a broader offensive against the Shia terror group within two days. All he needed was the order to advance.
The officer said: “We have plans to go as deep as needed. All the way to the Litani river and further, if necessary. We’re ready to mobilise if such an order arrives.”
So far, Hezbollah has been playing a cat-and-mouse game amid the rubble of the border villages, having chosen Kornet and other anti-tank missiles as their weapons of choice.
This was never supposed to happen again.
Israel inflicted significant damage on Hezbollah in 2024. The exploding pager operation and intelligence-led air strikes in Beirut wiped out the Shia terror group’s leadership; a short but bloody ground incursion dismantled its forward positions.
Under the subsequent US-brokered ceasefire, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) were supposed to disarm Hezbollah. However, even before the Iran-proxy started firing barrages of 15 to 20 Grad and other rockets south on Sunday, it was obvious that the LAF had largely failed.
Mr Turjman said: “People are saying enough. Look at this town – no one wants to live here any more because it’s so dangerous. We need the army to go far inside Lebanon and crush them so we can live in peace.”
The ground taken by the IDF since Tuesday includes what commanders refer to as the “first line” of Lebanese villages, which are now all but completely devoid of life.
It is a second and third line of villages, however, a few miles into the country, into which they believe Hezbollah fighters have infiltrated in significant numbers over recent weeks and months, that they are itching to assault.
The senior IDF official said: “They’ve been installing themselves there and we had intelligence that they were preparing to cross the border.”
He said the IDF ultimately saw the Lebanese army as “part of the solution, not the problem”, but that, currently, they lacked the will and capability to take on Hezbollah properly.
Furious at the ruinous impact this cycle of wars is having on ordinary Lebanese, Joseph Aoun, the president of Lebanon, this week banned all military activity by the terror group.
He has clamped down on the ability of Iranians to enter the country, in an attempt to stop Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp officers directing attacks on Israel from Lebanese soil.
At least seven Israeli soldiers have been injured since crossing the border, one seriously. It is thought at least 125 Lebanese have been killed. Down the hill from the fighting, Israelis are increasingly questioning the viability of life in the northernmost border towns.
So close are civilians here to the Hezbollah launch sites that the wail of sirens often starts too late for them to reach the concrete bomb shelters that punctuate the main streets before an air raid starts.
Mr Turjman laughs, pointing to the shelter about 30m from Mouritzio’s betting shop and café. He says: “You’d think it’s close enough, but often the warning comes with the explosion.”
He recalls how, when he was growing up, he would wash his hair quickly to reduce the time he could not hear a siren. His two daughters were born in Qiryat Shemona, but – like many of the town’s younger people – choose to live in other parts of Israel.
Israel has an unhappy history of invasions into Lebanon. It has paid a high price for them, in terms of soldiers’ lives and, at times, its reputation abroad. However, there is a feeling (not for the first time) that the endless emergencies to its north cannot be allowed to go on forever.
In a sign of bipartisan support for a potentially deeper operation, Yair Lapid, the leader of the opposition, said Israel had no choice but to create a “sterile zone” in the south of Lebanon. Some advocate pushing as far as the Litani River, which is 12 miles from the border at its closest point.
That would probably attract criticism from large sections of the international community without necessarily making Israelis safer.
On Friday, Volker Türk, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said a blanket evacuation order could breach international law. Yet most of Hezbollah’s rocket and drone launch sites are further north than the river.
In Metula, which is at the tip of the “finger” of Israeli territory that sticks into Lebanon, Avi Nadiv, the deputy major, has almost finished rebuilding his house, which was all but destroyed by two rockets in June 2024.
He points to the high ground over the border, and the ugly wall just beyond the vineyards. To the north-east, the snow-capped summit of Syrian-controlled Mount Hermon glints in the morning sun.
Mr Nadiv says: “Last night was scary. There were rockets all night and the sound of IDF shooting. It’s so beautiful here, but really challenging. My three children were born here, I want people to stay.”
About 2,300 residents were forced to leave when Hezbollah began attacking Israel in support of Hamas following the Oct 7, 2023 terror attacks.
Mr Nadiv says about 1,300 have returned, adding: “That time away was hard. We had to creep back in the evenings to collect our possessions, like thieves in the night. We’re not doing that again.”
He points up the hill. “We need to finish Hezbollah here.”
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission,EFCC, has arraigned two officials of FSDH Merchant Bank Limited over an alleged fraud involving $306,667.81 and €50,250.
This was disclosed in a statement posted on the official page of the Commission.
In the statement, the defendants, Bakare Oladimeji Surajudeen and James Olukayode Imokwede, were on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, brought before Justice Ismaila Ijelu of the Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja.
According to the EFCC, the defendants were arraigned on a 10-count charge bordering on alleged stealing and retention of stolen property belonging to FSDH Merchant Bank Limited.
The anti-graft agency stated that, “the petitioner, FSDH Merchant Bank Limited, alleged that an internal audit uncovered unauthorized debits totaling $306,667.81 and €50,250, equivalent to N527,406,916.66 five hundred and twenty-seven Million, four hundred and six thousand, nine hundred and sixteen naira, sixty six kobo.”
Investigations, the Commission said, showed that the transfers were allegedly processed through the SWIFT platform to third parties.
One of the charges read in court alleged that the defendants “dishonestly took the sum of N527,406,916.66, property of FSDH Merchant Bank Limited.”
The defendants pleaded not guilty to all the charges; following their plea, prosecution counsel, H. U. Kofarnaisa, asked the court for a trial date and requested that the defendants be remanded in a correctional facility pending trial.
Counsel to the defendants, Oluwaseun Akintunde and Olajide S. Onasanya, informed the court that bail applications had been filed and urged the court to grant bail on liberal terms.
The statement further noted that after listening to both parties, Justice Ijelu granted each defendant bail in the sum of N2 million with two sureties in like sum.
The court directed that one surety must be a gainfully employed relative and must provide evidence of tax payment for the last three years alongside proof of livelihood.
The defendants were ordered to deposit their international passports with the court and were barred from travelling outside the country without the court’s permission.
They were subsequently remanded in a correctional facility pending the perfection of their bail conditions.
The matter was adjourned till March 25, 2026, for the commencement of trial.
Abi o! See as dem dey shine teeth like say dem work hard for the money
DiamondsAreFore: If I were from the Niger Delta, I would be weeping over how my natural resources have benefitted an undeserving handful of persons to my detriment and at my expense.
Actually, yes. Most Arabs live below the poverty line
simpleseyi: . Iranians are not poor like you who gives your Pastors money to buy jets while you cannot afford a bus to work. Have you ever seen a poor Arab anywhere?
This is the one who is most likely to succeed his late father as the highest ranked cleric and ruler of the country.
According to their religious edicts, clerics are supposed to live modest lives devoted to prayer and not the obscene acquisition of wealth.
The 11 properties are in North London which means Dis one na the real landlord of North London. Arsenal fit dey drag North London with Tottenham but Ayatollah L'oko Iya Wón" 😂
Iran Ayatollah's son 'has £100million in property on Billionaire's Row' in North London
The son of Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei owns luxury mansions in Britain worth more than £100 million.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who is touted as the leader's successor, is said to own 11 properties on The Bishops Avenue - an exclusive street in Hampstead, north London, also known as 'Billionaires' Row'.
Mr Khamenei, the Ayatollah's second son, owns the properties through a network of shell companies, one of which is registered in the tax haven of the Isle of Man.
Birch Ventures Limited does not list Mr Khamenei as a director or owner, but it lists banker Ali Ansari as a beneficial owner.
Mr Ansari, described as an Iranian oligarch with close links to the Khamenei family, was sanctioned by the Treasury in October.
He is accused of financing the Ayatollah's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC), said to be behind most of the killings of protesters in the recent nationwide anti-regime demonstrations that left up to 70,000 Iranians dead.
Mr Ansari used to run the Ayandeh Bank, which collapsed last year, adding to Iran's economic woes. The Treasury sanction statement made no reference to Mr Khamenei being linked to Mr Ansari.
The news channel Bloomberg says it has spoken to sources and seen documents which link the London properties to Mr Khamenei, who has built himself a global property empire through Mr Ansari.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who is touted as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's successor, is said to own 11 properties on Bishops Avenue.
Land Registry Records show The Bishops Avenue premises were all bought together in 2013 for £73 million, and their value is now believed to be in excess of £100 million.
It comes as five people were killed after explosions ripped across Iran yesterday. Video footage showed smoke billowing from a building in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas.
A four-year-old girl was killed and 14 people injured. Fire chiefs blamed the blast on a gas explosion.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said social media reports alleging the commander of the regime's naval forces had been targeted in the Bandar Abbas explosion were 'completely false'.
Four members of the same family died in an explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to the state-run Tehran Times.
Dramatic satellite images show activity at Iranian nuclear sites bombed by the US.
Again, a gas leak was blamed for the blast. Four other explosions were reported across Iran.
It follows US President Donald Trump's threat of airstrikes against the Ayatollah over the deaths of protesters. Two Israeli officials said the country was not involved in the blasts. Last night, the Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran's most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil. It is also home to the IRGC naval headquarters.
This is what happens when you prioritise someone else's problems over your own.
Over the past 3 years, Iran has basically turned its arms and weaponry industry into Russia's main supply for drones and rockets in the Ukraine War. These are resources which they would have needed for their own self defence.
Also, instead of concentrating on American and Israeli military targets, they have been firing indiscriminately at civilian populations mainly in Israel, but also across several other Middle East countries.
By comparison, the Americans and Israelis have quietly concentrated on destroying Iran’s rocket launching facilities and capabilities. The sad and unfortunate incident of the girls school that was struck which led to the deaths of 148 school girls, happened because the school was located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IIRGC) rocket launching facility.
It is possible that in less than two week's time, we may be entering into the next phase of the war which will be that of boots on the ground which will be led by the IDF, although Trump has said he will not rule out the possibility of American troops getting involved.
Number of rockets fired by Tehran over 24-hours has plummeted – possibly owing to its ground launchers being blown up in strikes
Iran appears to have lost its ability to fire massive missile salvos in retaliation against the United States and Israel.
Tehran has significantly curbed the number of ballistic missiles it is firing in a 24-hour period, according to analysis published by countries coming under attack from the Islamic Republic.
Experts suggest this could be the result of the Iranian armed forces losing ground-based missile launchers in US strikes, known as transporter erector launchers (TEL).
Iran is thought to have fired off hundreds more missiles in the initial days of this conflict than it did during the 12-day war with Israel in June last year.
Iran was believed to have vast stockpiles of short-range ballistic missiles before the conflict started, with conservative estimates putting the numbers at around 2,000 to 2,500.
Tehran has launched an estimated 500-750 ballistic missiles since Saturday, targeting mainly Israel and countries across the Gulf that host American military bases.
Countries such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait have been publishing a daily tally of Iranian missiles and drones launched in their direction.
In the first two days of the conflict, Iran fired an average of 58 ballistic missiles a day at the UAE, but this fell to only 10 on the fourth day.
This was the “preliminary evidence that Iran is running out of ballistic missiles”, according to Colby Badhwar, a defence analyst.
Bahrain claimed to have successfully intercepted a total of 70 missiles on Tuesday. A day later, it said the total number had risen to 74.
Kuwait claimed to have engaged a total of 97 ballistic missiles in the first 24 hours of the war, but has not provided new figures in the days since.
Qatar’s defence ministry on Wednesday said it had been targeted by two ballistic missiles, with one of them hitting the Al-Udeid base without causing casualties.
This figure was down from seven ballistic missiles launched against the Gulf state on Monday.
In total, Qatar claims to have been targeted with at least 101 ballistic missiles, with the vast majority coming in the first and second days of the war.
American tactics have focused on destroying Iran’s offensive capabilities, wiping out many of the TELs.
“We’re focused on shooting everything that can shoot at us,” Brad Cooper, who heads up US central command, said in a briefing
Satellite images have shown damage to missile facilities across Iran, including one ballistic missile site in the central city of Isfahan. The site, which was partially rebuilt after American attacks in June during the 12-day war, was struck again between Feb 27 and March 1, according to before-and-after satellite images. Satellite imagery shows damage to a ballistic missile facility at Isfahan, around 270 miles south of Tehran.
Fabian Hoffmann, a missile technology expert based in Oslo, wrote on social media: “Given that the present conflict is far more existential from a regime perspective and that short-range ballistic missiles are viable, one would expect significantly greater ballistic missile use unless Iran’s missile and launcher capabilities have been heavily degraded – which evidently they are.
“Interceptor stockpile shortages were, and arguably remain, a valid concern, but only if Iran had been able to sustain the intensity observed during the first two nights, which it clearly has not. At present, with the possible exception of Bahrain, no Gulf state appears to be in a particularly alarming position.”
The US is also depleting its stocks of precision weapons, leaving it “days away” from being forced to prioritise which targets to intercept, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
Few countries on earth can claim to have a navy with a longer history than that of Iran, whose heritage dates back to the First Persian Empire of 500BC.
One wonders what that era’s great and terrible warriors would think about the state of the Iranian navy now.
Four days into the United States-Israeli war on Iran, the Islamic Republic’s naval headquarters is in ruins, one of its elite admirals is dead and its finest warships are ablaze in the Gulf of Oman, home to its southern fleet.
Donald Trump has made the annihilation of the Iranian navy a key goal of his campaign, with the US boasting on Monday that all 11 of Iran’s vessels stationed in the Gulf of Oman have been destroyed.
US forces have also mostly destroyed the headquarters of the Iranian naval fleet in the port of Bandar Abbas, while Ali Shamkhani, an admiral in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been killed in an Israeli air strike.
The president’s goal appears to be clearing the Gulf of Oman of warships used by Tehran to enforce a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical trade route that carries one-fifth of the world’s oil shipments. Iran said it had closed the Strait on Monday.
It remains to be seen whether the US’s goal has been achieved, as marine traffic data show, as of Tuesday morning, a large number of ships are still queuing to enter the Strait.
The scale of the destruction of Iran’s navy has been laid bare in satellite images, which show a striking before-and-after scene of the port of Bandar Abbas in the Gulf of Oman.
Google Earth imagery taken on Feb 22 shows many of Iran’s naval vessels – belonging either to its regular navy or elite IRGC naval units – docked and intact in Bandar Abbas.
At least 11 large-scale military vessels are visible in the image, along with dozens of other smaller vessels, which may be civilian or military.
But a new image captured by Planet Labs, a satellite imaging firm, shows the same area shrouded in thick, black smoke, the aftermath of heavy US bombing of the port.
Zoom in on that image’s bottom-right corner and you will see what appears to be the smouldering remains of Iran’s biggest naval vessel, the IRIS Makran.
Built from a converted oil tanker, the Makran is, perhaps unintentionally, an apt symbol for the Iranian military: crippled by sanctions, lacking in key parts and forced to make do with what is available.
Despite its rather Heath Robinson-esque origins, the Makran was feted by the regime as a major new tool in its arsenal, taking part in a two-day missile exercise in 2021.
United States Central Command (Centcom), the US military command in the Middle East, also claims to have struck an Iranian carrier, the IRIS Shahid Bagheri, which is used to launch drones and helicopters for aerial attacks.
The satellite imagery is striking and will support the Trump administration’s claims that its war on Iran is ahead of schedule and going exceedingly well.
But security experts say there is nothing particularly impressive about blowing up Iran’s poorly maintained military assets, which in some cases date back to the rule of the Shah from 1949 to 1971. The Bayandor-class corvettes IRIS Bayandor and IRIS Naghdi, both destroyed this week, were launched in 1964.
“If you compare their navy with Donald Trump’s big beautiful Armada, it’s more like a dwarf,” Dr Andreas Böhm, a Middle East expert from the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, told The Telegraph.
“It has been very much weakened by sanctions, its material is outdated, and when you look at the air force, for example, mostly all the aircraft is from the Shah era and is US-built. It’s really old,” he said.
Dr Böhm added that when this was taken into account, the US bombing campaign was “not impressive”.
Conversely, one area where the Iranian navy has had an impact is its closure of the Strait of Hormuz by threatening to “set fire” to passing commercial ships.
“They are capable of being a menace in the Persian Gulf, but it’s not like they could hold their own against the United States in kinetic terms,” he said.
“What they are capable of is asymmetric warfare, and we can see this in the Strait of Hormuz, where insurance prices have skyrocketed, and companies are refraining from sending their ships through.”
“We are seeing two different strategies,” he said. “The US and Israel are trying to hit hard and fast, while Iranians are trying to endure, to have strategic depth – keeping their heads down and waiting for the costs to increase on the US and its allies.
This war has the potential to be more devastating for Iran than previously thought.
Iran is actually a multi ethnic country. Yes, the Persians are the largest ethnic group and they're the ones who have dominated the country for centuries. But there are also smaller ethnic nationalities like the Baloches, Azeris, Kurds and Arabs who have been suppressed by the Persians and who might now see the current war as an opportunity to break free from Iran.
Iran's minority Arab population is concentrated in the Khuzestan province, which contains much of Iran’s oil resources and the likes of Saudi Arabia will be very happy to help them secede from Iran which will definitely take away a lot of Iran's oil wealth.
Tehran’s next leader will have to decide whether they want a deal or a fight to the death
In the coming days or weeks, Iranian clerics will determine whether the Islamic Republic seeks de-escalation or pursues suicidal confrontation with the United States and Israel.
Several favourites to lead the country have emerged out of the rubble of the air strikes that killed Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, on Saturday. Many of the previous candidates were killed on the opening day of the war.
“It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead,” admitted Donald Trump.
Here are the leading contenders vying for power in the wake of the Ayatollah’s killing:
Alireza Arafi
Likely strategy: Ceasefire
The path toward de-escalation runs through Alireza Arafi, the 67-year-old cleric selected to join the temporary council.
Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, told his Omani counterpart that Iran was “open to any serious efforts” to stop escalation – the first diplomatic signal that Tehran might seek an off-ramp from war.
If clerics select Mr Arafi as Supreme Leader, it would signal willingness to return to that diplomatic framework.
Mr Arafi controls Iran’s seminaries and religious education infrastructure, giving him clerical credentials.
His controversial 2023 trip to Moscow, during which he met Russian officials and talked about Iran’s desire for “extensive cooperation with Russia”, suggests he has backing from the Kremlin.
But Mr Arafi’s selection would probably mean he serves as a figurehead, while the real power resides with the Larijani family.
Ali Larijani, an adviser, diplomat and scholar, whom the Ayatollah trusted more than anyone, has long been assigned to safeguard the Iranian regime in the event its leadership was wiped out.
In this scenario, Mr Arafi would provide religious legitimacy while the Larijani brothers, Ali and Sadeq, both key members of Khomeini’s inner circle, would exercise actual control, using Omani mediation to negotiate a ceasefire that preserves the regime’s core interests – ending strikes, maintaining some nuclear capability, avoiding regime change.
Russia would guarantee the agreement. The US would accept limited Iranian nuclear enrichment in exchange for verified constraints preventing weapons development.
There are some obstacles: hardliners who view negotiation as betrayal, commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who want revenge for dead colleagues, and clerics who issued fatwas declaring revenge for Khamenei’s death.
Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri
Likely strategy: Suicidal escalation
Mohammad Mehdi Mirbagheri is a 66-year-old cleric whose apocalyptic theology and absolutist politics represent Iran’s most radical ideological current.
Mr Mirbagheri said on television that “to reach the goal of divine proximity, even if half the world’s people are killed, it is worth it. Therefore, the killing of 42,000 people in Gaza does not matter compared to that great goal”.
This logic – that tens of thousands of deaths are acceptable costs for theological objectives – would also be likely to be applied to domestic and foreign policy.
If clerics select Mr Mirbagheri, it would signal rejection of any negotiated settlement and commitment to total war regardless of consequences.
He views the Islamic Republic as part of “God’s grand plan” and conflict between “believers and infidels” as inevitable.
His ideal governance model is “maximalist velayat-e faqih” that comprehensively directs all aspects of society toward “establishing monotheism” without being limited by geographic borders.
In this scenario, Iran would continue “Operation True Promise 4” with sustained attacks on US bases across the region, Israeli cities, and Gulf states hosting American forces.
As Supreme Leader, Mr Mirbagheri would order continued strikes on aircraft carriers, oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and UAE, and keep the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20 per cent of global oil passes, closed.
The US would respond with overwhelming force, potentially including strikes on Iran’s remaining government infrastructure, cities, imposition of complete economic blockade, and support for regime change operations.
This scenario would end in Iran’s destruction – but Mirbagheri’s theology frames martyrdom as victory.
“The progress model must do many things so that women observe hijab and not just rely on persuasion,” he has said, suggesting his vision of governance extends beyond mere survival to comprehensive ideological transformation.
If the Islamic Republic cannot achieve that transformation, according to Mr Mirbagheri, destruction becomes an acceptable outcome.
Sadeq Larijani
Likely strategy: Pragmatic survival
The path towards managed succession runs through Sadeq Larijani, the 64-year-old head of the Expediency Council whose brother Ali has spent years positioning him as the candidate who can maintain consensus across factions during crises.
Sadeq Larijani served as judiciary chief during the brutal 2009 Green Movement crackdown, establishing hardline credentials.
Sadeq Larijani, the head of the Expediency Council, represents a pragmatic option
But he also occasionally criticised corruption – although considered corrupt himself – and endorsed limited legal reforms, creating just enough moderate credibility to be palatable across factions.
More importantly, he has avoided the polarising controversies that damaged other candidates – no televised statements about acceptable death tolls, no threats to raise flags in Baku, no suspicious Moscow trips suggesting foreign backing.
In this scenario, the Assembly of Experts selects Sadeq Larijani directly rather than elevating Mr Arafi as figurehead.
This signals prioritisation of institutional continuity over ideological purity.
Sadeq would pursue Khamenei’s policies without Khamenei’s charisma – maintaining confrontation with the West while avoiding suicidal escalation, preserving the nuclear programme while exploring diplomatic constraints, suppressing dissent while allowing limited economic reform.
The Larijani family’s decades of network building, strategic marriages into clerical establishment and careful positioning across key institutions would translate into a governing coalition.
Ali Larijani continues running crisis management as national security council secretary. Sadeq chairs the expediency council that approves major decisions. The family’s students and allies staff critical positions throughout the system.
This scenario is the Islamic Republic’s best chance of survival – not through victory but through outlasting America’s attention span, exploiting divisions among regional states, and demonstrating enough restraint to avoid triggering regime change operations while maintaining enough confrontation to satisfy hardliners.
Mojtaba Khamenei
Likely strategy: Military coup, installed as IRGC puppet – if alive
A possible military dictatorship could seize power through Mojtaba Khamenei, the dead Supreme Leader’s second son, who has operated in the shadows for years as his father’s unofficial deputy and potential successor.
If he survived the strikes and the Assembly of Experts fractures over succession – with the clerics unable to agree on Arafi, Mirbagheri, Sadeq Larijani or other candidates – the IRGC could simply impose Mojtaba through military force.
As Khamenei’s son, he carries dynastic legitimacy. As someone who has managed his father’s office and networks for years, he understands the system’s mechanics. As a figure acceptable to IRGC commanders who want revenge for dead colleagues, he provides military backing.
In this scenario, Iran becomes an explicit military dictatorship rather than a theocracy with military characteristics.
The pretence of clerical rule continues, but actual power stays with IRGC commanders who elevate Mojtaba as a figurehead while making decisions through military councils.
The temporary leadership council becomes permanent with rotating military commanders replacing civilian officials.
Iran pursues what IRGC commanders describe as “powerful blows to the tired military body of the enemy” while consolidating domestic control through intensified repression. Power vacuum leads to civil war
Another possible outcome that could play out is that an IRGC military coup led by Mojtaba Khamenei triggers something all previous scenarios sought to avoid: civil war and separatist movements exploiting central government weakness.
Kurdish areas in north-west Iran, long seeking autonomy, would probably declare independence or intensify armed resistance if they perceived the central government collapsing into military dictatorship.
Arab populations in Khuzestan province, which contains much of Iran’s oil infrastructure, have historical grievances and could launch separatist movements.
Kurdish separatists could rebel against any Iranian regime that is formed.
Baluch militants in south-eastern Iran near the Pakistani border have conducted attacks for years and would exploit chaos to expand operations.
Iran fragments into competing zones of control – IRGC-dominated Persian core around Tehran, Kurdish autonomous regions in north-west, Arab-majority areas in the south-west, Baluch territories in the south-east.
The Islamic Republic that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini built survives as a rump state controlling perhaps half its former territory while prosecuting multiple counterinsurgency campaigns.
The element of surprise
When Ayatollah Khomeini died in 1989, the Assembly of Experts selected Ali Khamenei within hours despite his lack of required religious credentials, demonstrating the system’s ability to adapt constitutional requirements to political necessities.
The same flexibility could elevate unexpected candidates – perhaps a figure not currently being discussed, someone emerging from the IRGC or from quietist clerics in Qom who have avoided politics until crisis demands engagement.
State TV has also been prominently showing Hasan Khomeini, Khomeini’s grandson, since Saturday – potentially sending a message.
Israel hacked nearly all of Tehran’s traffic cameras to spy on Ali Khamenei before launching an attack to kill Iran’s Supreme Leader.
Israeli spies spent years surveilling the Ayatollah’s bodyguards by accessing the Iranian capital’s traffic camera network, intelligence sources claimed.
Operatives were even reported to have hacked a security camera facing Khamenei’s compound that showed where security guards would park their cars.
The camera enabled spies to know when the Ayatollah would be at home and disrupt mobile phone service around his compound so aides would not be able to call for help in the case of an ambush.
Details of the Mossad operation were first reported by the Financial Times as Israel launched a ground invasion of Lebanon on day four of the war.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, said the operation against Iran was “well ahead of schedule” but warned that “the big wave hasn’t even happened yet”.
Interim leaders in Iran have formed a council that will eventually select a new Supreme Leader to replace Khamenei.
He is the highest-profile leader to be assassinated by Israel since Oct 7, following the killings of the leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas.
The hacked traffic camera images in Tehran were encrypted and transmitted to Israel, allowing intelligence officials to determine the addresses, hours of work, routes and duties of Iran’s most senior security personnel before the US-Israeli attack at the weekend.
“We knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,” one Israeli intelligence official told the Financial Times. “And when you know [a place] as well as you know the street you grew up on, you notice a single thing that’s out of place.”
Israel’s intelligence superiority over Iran was on display during last year’s 12-day war, when a joint operation with the US hit Iranian military bases and nuclear facilities and assassinated more than a dozen nuclear scientists and senior officials.
In the latest US-Israeli barrage, known as Operation Epic Fury, Israel reportedly employed a method called social network analysis to study patterns of behaviour and better understand how people interact.
With this intelligence, Israel and the CIA determined it would be easier to kill Khamenei at the start of the assault, rather than targeting him in the midst of a war when he could escape to a bunker.
An individual briefed on the attack told the Financial Times that the assault on Iran had been planned for months, but the timeline was adjusted once it was revealed that Khamenei would be attending a meeting at his compound in person on Saturday morning.
On the day, thanks to the hacked traffic cameras and access to Iranian mobile phone networks, at least two Israeli intelligence officers, working independently, were able to confirm that Khamenei’s meeting was on time.
Mr Trump told Fox News that Khamenei “was eliminated along with his inner circle as they gathered for breakfast”.
The Israeli military said that striking during the day, instead of at night, had “allowed Israel to achieve tactical surprise for the second time, despite heavy Iranian preparedness”.
Israel had deployed jets hours earlier so they would arrive at the right location on time and fired as many as 30 precision strikes on Khamenei’s complex, according to a former senior Israeli intelligence official.
The US military launched cyber attacks in order to allow the Israeli jets to reach the compound.
Speaking to reporters on Monday morning, General Dan Caine, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said that the initial phase of the operation was “designed to daze and confuse” Iran.
“Coordinated space and cyber operations effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks across the area of responsibility, leaving the adversary without the ability to see, coordinate, or respond effectively,” he added.
On Sunday, officials from the Trump administration acknowledged that there was no intelligence showing that Iran was prepared to attack the US first. US Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said there was no imminent threat from Iran to America.
After a classified briefing on Monday, Mike Johnson, the US Speaker, told reporters that Israel had been “determined to act with or without the US” and “consequences of inaction on our part would have been devastating”.
The US president suggested the missiles that killed Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking officials in the early hours of Saturday in Tehran were just the start of his military campaign.
“We haven’t even started hitting them hard. The big wave hasn’t even happened. The big one is coming soon,” Mr Trump told CNN.
He refused to rule out American boots on the ground in Iran during a separate interview with the New York Post.
“I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the ground – like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the ground’. I don’t say it.
“I say ‘probably don’t need them’, [or] ‘if they were necessary’.”
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, said that while the country was not preparing ground forces to enter Iran at this time, Mr Trump had the option on the table.
He added that the Trump administration believed it could achieve its objectives without using ground forces.
Mr Trump made the comments after speaking in an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, in which he criticised Sir Keir Starmer’s initial refusal to let US forces use Diego Garcia during the operation.
The US president said he was “very disappointed” in Sir Keir for blocking him from using the Chagos Islands air base, adding he “took far too long” to change his mind. He said the move was unlike anything that had “happened between our countries before”.
Earlier on Monday, Mr Trump’s top general said that the US military was sending more troops to the Middle East as it continued to attack Iran.
More “tactical aviation” would be sent to the region after three days of air strikes, Gen Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, told a Pentagon press conference.
In a warning to America’s adversaries, Gen Caine said: “We can reach you, we can sustain the fight and we will scale the fight.”
Six US soldiers have been killed so far, and Mr Trump and Pete Hegseth, the US secretary of war, have told Americans to prepare for more casualties.
Three US fighter jets were downed in Kuwait by friendly fire.
The F-15 jets were “mistakenly shot down by Kuwaiti air defences”, with all six crew on board safely ejected and unharmed.
Mr Trump’s Operation Epic Fury entered its third day on Monday. At least 555 people in the region have been killed.
The US has also urged its citizens to leave more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates.
Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night in a move set to drive oil prices even higher.
The country’s Revolutionary Guard said it would set fire to any ship trying to pass through the narrow waterway, through which approximately 21 million barrels of oil pass each day.
Consumers have already been warned they will have to pay more for petrol, and possibly food.
The price of Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose nine per cent on Monday to $79.33 (£59.19) a barrel.
The US president told CNN that the war could last a month. He said: “I don’t want to see it go on too long. I always thought it would be four weeks. And we’re a little ahead of schedule.”
Mr Hegseth, an Iraq war veteran, insisted that the conflict would not be “endless”.
But he cheered the death of a regime that “chanted death to America” and instead was “gifted death by America”.
“This is not a so-called regime change war but the regime sure did change and the world is better off for it,” Mr Hegseth said.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll published on Sunday found just 27 per cent of Americans approved of the strikes, while 43 per cent disapproved and 29 per cent were unsure.
Gen Caine said that the “sky surged to life” on Saturday when the operation began with strikes on more than 1,000 targets within the first 24 hours.
He described the operation as a “massive overwhelming attack across all domains of warfare” that was given the go-ahead by Mr Trump with the words: “Operation Epic Fury is approved. No Aborts. Good luck.”
Mr Trump said: “We’re knocking the c--p out of them. I think it’s going very well.”
Mr Trump admitted that the “biggest surprise” was Iran’s attacks on other Arab countries in the region.
They include the strikes on the Jumeirah Palm hotel in Dubai and the attacks on airports that have left hundreds of thousands of travellers stranded.
Mr Trump said: “We were surprised. We told them [the other Arab nations] ‘we’ve got this’ and now they want to fight. And they’re aggressively fighting. They were going to be very little involved and now they insist on being involved.”
Mr Hegseth sought to cast the offensive against Iran as a response to 47 years of aggression since the Islamic revolution in 1979.
He claimed that Iran was building “powerful missiles and drones to create a conventional shield for their nuclear blackmail ambitions”.
Ultimately, it was Iran’s nuclear ambitions that “had to be addressed”, Mr Hegseth said.
He also appeared to criticise the UK and other Western allies for failing to back the strikes immediately.
Sir Keir initially turned down a US request to use British bases for its campaign against Iran but changed his mind late on Sunday.
Mr Hegseth said that Israel, which has been at the forefront of the bombardment, was a “capable partner, unlike so many of our traditional allies”.
“Allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force,” he said.
Israel began a fresh wave of strikes on Tehran on Monday night. Explosions were heard near the headquarters of state broadcaster IRIB.
At least three devastating new weapons appear to have been used by US forces for the first time in the opening salvo of Operation Epic Fury against Iran.
Iran-style suicide drones, reverse-engineered from Iranian technology, were used in the attack, US officials said.
A unique black Tomahawk missile and precision-strike missile were also launched, footage shared by the US Navy and US Central Command appeared to show.
Iranian-style suicide drone
The Lucas (FLM-136) kamikaze drone was modelled on the Iranian Shahed 136, infamous for its use by Russian forces in Ukraine.
There are few public details of the weapon, but it is said to have the ability to find targets beyond the line of sight, including ones that suddenly pop up in front of it.
These features make the drones more capable than the variant being used by Russia against Ukraine’s cities and critical infrastructure.
The US military effectively pinched the idea from Iran because the weapon is cheap and much easier to make than a conventional missile.
“Costing approximately $35,000 [£26,000] per unit, Lucas is a low-cost, scalable system that provides cutting-edge capabilities at a fraction of the cost of traditional long-range US systems that can deliver similar effects,” Capt Tim Hawkins of the US Navy, a Central Command spokesman, told The Warzone last year.
It is likely that the Lucas drones used to target Iran were ground-launched, but recent demonstrations by US forces have shown they can also be fired from ships.
Black-painted Tomahawk missile
The new Tomahawk could be the first sighting of an upgraded Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST), according to The Warzone website.
Unlike its predecessor and other variants, the ship-launched cruise missile had a coating of black paint.
Analysts speculated that this could prevent radar detection or suppress infrared targeting. Normally, Tomahawk missiles are grey.
“We would expect this to be a low observable coating aimed at enhancing the survivability of the weapon, especially for strikes against maritime targets,” The Warzone wrote.
The darker paint could make it harder to see the ship-launched variant conceal itself against the waves as it skims low across the water towards its target.
Fabian Hoffman, a missile technology expert, wrote on social media: “Tomahawk’s lack of stealthiness has been noted by European officials from what I have heard, so that this exists makes sense.”
A low-resolution image of a black-looking missile was used to advertise Maritime Strike Tomahawk (MST) on a slide show published by the Naval Air Systems Command as an overview of the missile.
The US has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years overhauling the Tomahawk, a weapon that first debuted in combat in 1991.
Yet there is no official confirmation that this is the first appearance of the upgraded MST.
Atacms Successor
A video shared by the US military showed ground-based Himars rocket launchers firing off the latest short-ranged ballistic missile available to troops.
The precision-strike missile is the successor to the Army Tactical Missile System – otherwise known as Atacms – used by the Ukrainians in the war against Russia.
A fact sheet published by its manufacturer, Lockheed Martin, claims the missile can strike targets at a range of around 500km.
While there is not a publicised top speed, its predecessor can travel towards a target quicker than 2,000 mph.
The likely targets in Iran would have been air-defence systems, radar stations and other ground-based launchers.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran's new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with the Atlantic magazine.
"They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them. They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long," Trump said in the interview from his Florida residence.
Trump did not specify who he would be speaking with or say whether it would occur on Sunday or Monday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said a leadership council composed of himself, the judiciary head and a member of the powerful Guardians Council had temporarily assumed the duties of supreme leader following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Trump said some of the people who were involved in recent talks with the U.S. are no longer alive.
"Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big - that was a big hit," he was quoted as saying in the interview with Atlantic staff writer Michael Scherer. "They should have done it sooner, Michael. They could have made a deal. They should've done it sooner. They played too cute."
You're not a Christian,no matter how many times you lie to yourself and the world. Iran's islamists deserve everything they're getting and more. I'm sure they would never have given the greenlight to the October 7th 2023 atrocities if they knew it would cost them their lives
God1000: America, Israel and US allies will surely pay for this
For those of you mocking Iran's supreme leader, remember how this same america murdered so many African revolutionaries for opposing them, some of you are happy because Iran is a Muslim country
As a christian, i will never support oppression, genocide and imperialism
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