₦airaland Forum

US president signals willingness to engage with Tehran’s surviving leadership as strikes and retaliatory attacks intensify across region

Donald Trump said on Sunday he was prepared to talk to what was left of the Iranian leadership after the killing of the country’s supreme leader by US-Israeli airstrikes aimed at overthrowing the regime.

Trump was speaking as a second day of intense bombing of Iranian cities and Tehran’s missile counterattacks sent tremors across the region and through the global economy. On Monday the conflict spread to Lebanon as Israel began striking Hezbollah targets, after the group launched missiles and drones towards Israel’s north in retaliation for the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, who was also an adviser to the country’s former supreme leader, said on Monday that Tehran would not negotiate with the US, and denied reports that officials had sought to initiate talks with the Trump administration.

Amir-Saeid Iravani, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, told an emergency security council meeting on Saturday that hundreds of civilians had been killed or injured in the US-Israeli strikes. He said they had deliberately targeted civilian neighbourhoods in multiple cities.

The death toll is expected to climb after a second day of bombing. Iranian state media said that 165 people had been confirmed dead in a bomb attack on a girls’ primary school in the southern city of Minab on Saturday.

Among the dead was Khamenei, who had ruled as Iran’s supreme leader since 1989 and was the primary target of an initial Israeli strike on Saturday morning. According to several US reports, the CIA had been tracking Khamenei for months. The New York Times reported that the CIA tipped off Israel when the leader convened a meeting of top defence aides at his compound in Tehran, triggering a decision to strike.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the Israeli army employed a ruse to put the Iranian leadership off its guard. On the morning of the operation, army officers were asked not to park their cars in their usual spaces to avoid detection by Iran’s spies. Misinformation was also leaked suggesting that the chief of staff Lt Gen Eyal Zamir had stayed at home.

The channel cited officials as saying the Israeli air force killed 30 high-ranking Iranian officials within the first 30 seconds of the attack.

Trump told Fox News that 48 Iranian leaders had been killed in the first two days of bombing, and claimed in a social media post that nine Iranian warships had been sunk and the naval headquarters destroyed.

The ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl reported that the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran “but they were killed in the initial attack”.

“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates … It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead,” Trump said, according to Karl’s reports.

Nine Israelis have so far died in Iranian missile counterstrikes, and US forces confirmed their first casualties of the war: three dead and five injured by shrapnel. The official announcement did not give details on where and how the casualties occurred.

Iran has also targeted Gulf countries that host US military bases. Airports in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Dubai were damaged by missiles and remained shut on Sunday, causing one of global aviation’s most severe disruptions in years.

Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile vowed to intensify the aerial attacks on Iran, while Trump said he was open to talks with Iran’s surviving and newly appointed leaders.

They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he told the Atlantic magazine, without revealing when those talks may start. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

In remarks to the Daily Mail, Trump suggested the conflict with Iran could go on for the next four weeks. He also said there could be more American casualties and vowed to avenge American deaths.

He was speaking as the global effects of the war began to be felt. The price of oil rose after two reported attacks on tankers in or near the strait of Hormuz.

About 150 tankers were reported to have dropped anchor rather than use the waterway, a route for about a fifth of the world’s traded oil. Major container shipping companies, including MSC and Maersk, have suspended navigation in the region.

The ship attacks were a reminder of the conflict’s potential to trigger an environmental catastrophe.

In launching the war, Trump said it would provide an opportunity for the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow the 47-year-old Islamic regime. Nationwide protests earlier this year were brutally suppressed by security forces, and some estimates say tens of thousands of civilians were killed.

The Iranian authorities said that 22 border guards at Mehran, on the Iranian-Iraqi border, had been killed, a sign that the US and Israel were seeking to weaken the regime’s control of Iran’s borders in support of anti-government separatists.

Across the country, Iranians said they felt a mixture of terror and optimism as the bombings continued. Some expressed relief that the long-expected strikes had arrived and opponents of the regime spoke of hope that they may lead to political change – but both were tempered by fear that the attacks would bring more civilian deaths to a country already reeling from recent bloodshed.

Larijani accused the US and Israel of trying to plunder and fragment Iran and warned “secessionist groups” of a harsh response if they attempted to intervene, state television said.

The regime in Tehran insisted that Khamenei’s killing would not weaken its resolve. Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said Netanyahu and Trump had “crossed a red line” and “will pay for it”, according to state media.

Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, said a leadership council composed of himself, the judiciary head and a member of the powerful Guardian Council had temporarily assumed the duties of supreme leader until a replacement was chosen. Khamenei had not designated a successor.

Esmaeil Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry, said he expected the process of selecting a new supreme leader to be relatively quick.

masterfactor:
The new leadership is not interested, let the war continues

dermmy:
But Trump said it will last for months and U.S is prepared for all scenarios and more U.S servicemen may like die, so he doesn't want more body bags? Don't start what you can't finish. #TACO

Antiochus:
War is a bad decision. Diplomacy is always the best option

LagosOrigin:
The new leader that has been eliminated?

LagosOrigin:
The new leader that has been eliminated?

Biodun1929:
I doubt it will reach that point of using nukes. Nuclear bombs have only been used twice in history, by Americans within a 3 month time span. But if Israel does use nuke on Iran, I believe Iran's allies, Russia and China will enter the war...and it might be the start of a world war.

Hanibbal:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/01/trump-open-to-talks-with-iran-as-conflict-deepens-in-middle-east

WaleBuraimoh:
Keep quiet, it is the Iranian leadership that is calling for peace talks.

Mattswaggz:
He has always been open to talk but the thing is the other side will have to succumb to his wants which they view as too "demanding".

Igbophobia:
Very smart man. He wants to save lives after the shock elimination of the top terrorists.
At the end it's Iran's crude oil and peaceful cooperative government that matters.