Trump agrees to talks with Iran's new leadership

By Agency Staff

Washington/Jerusalem — US 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 when the talks would occur.

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 US 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.”

Central Tehran

Earlier, Israel said it launched a broad wave of strikes in central Tehran on Sunday and was seeking to dominate the skies over the capital, after its air force killed Iran’s supreme leader in a large-scale assault that has raised fears of widening instability in the Middle East.

Over the past day Israel’s air force conducted strikes to open the “path to Tehran“ and the Israeli military said the majority of aerial defence systems in western and central Iran had been dismantled.

Israeli military spokesperson Lt-Col Nadav Shoshani told reporters that many targets remained, including military-industrial production sites. “We have the capabilities and the targets to keep going on for as long as necessary,” he said.

Ground forces

Asked whether Israel was considering deploying ground forces to Iran, Shoshani said that was not under consideration even though Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to seize a rare opportunity to topple their leaders.

Hours after the US and Israel said an air strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the military campaign to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s state media confirmed the 86-year-old leader had died.

Revolutionary Guards

Khamenei, who built Iran into a powerful anti-US force and spread its sway across the Middle East during his 36-year iron-fisted rule, was working in his office at the time of Saturday’s attack, state media said. It also killed his daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law.

Experts said that while the deaths of Khamenei and other Iranian leaders would deal the country a major blow, it would not necessarily spell the end of Iran’s entrenched clerical rule or the sway of the elite Revolutionary Guards over the population.

Assembly of Experts

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on Sunday that the death of Khamenei was “a defining moment in Iran’s history.”

“What comes next is uncertain. But there is now an open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape,” Kallas said on social media platform X.

Under Iran’s constitution, the Supreme Leader is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body that supervises and in theory can sack that figure.

That top official holds ultimate power in Iran, acting as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and deciding on the direction of foreign policy, defined largely by confrontation with the US and Israel.

Ayatollah Alireza Arafi was appointed on Sunday as the jurist member of Iran’s leadership council, a body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader’s role until the Assembly of Experts elects a new leader, ISNA news agency reported.

A cleric member of the Guardian Council, Arafi will be part of the temporary leadership council alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and chief justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei.

Khamenei successor

Two US sources and a US official familiar with the matter said Israel and the US timed their attack on Saturday to coincide with a meeting Khamenei was holding with top aides.

Insiders in Iran said the ruling establishment would immediately seek to name a successor to Khamenei to signal stability and continuity.

In another blow for Iran’s leadership, Armed Forces chief of staff Abdolrahim Mousavi was killed in the strikes, broadcaster Iran TV said.

After Iran retaliated with airstrikes around the Gulf, Anwar Gargash, adviser to the president of US ally and oil power the United Arab Emirates, urged Tehran to “go back to your senses“, saying the war is not with Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours. The UAE has so far borne the heaviest brunt of Iran’s retaliation.

Trump warned on Sunday that the US would hit Iran “with a force that has never been seen before” if it strikes back after the attacks on it.

“Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever been hit before,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

He added, “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”

’Red line’

In remarks directed at Trump and his close ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said “we will strike you with such terrifying blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg.”

“I say to Trump and Netanyahu and their agents and proxies, I repeat, I say to these two filthy criminals and to all their agents: you have crossed our red line, and you must pay the price for it.”

Oman’s maritime security centre said that Palau-flagged oil tanker Skylight was attacked about five nautical miles off Oman’s Musandam. Four people were injured and the whole crew of 20 people was evacuated.

Pakistan clashes

Pakistani police on Sunday clashed with protesters who breached the outer wall of the US consulate in Karachi, leaving nine people dead, after news of US and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Khamenei.

In Iraq, police fired tear gas and stun grenades to scatter hundreds of pro-Iranian protesters who gathered outside the Green Zone in the capital Baghdad, where the US Embassy is located.

Global air travel remained heavily disrupted as continued air strikes kept major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai — the world’s busiest international hub — closed in one of the biggest aviation interruptions in recent years.

Several blasts were heard for a second day in regional business hub Dubai and over Qatar’s capital of Doha, witnesses said, after Iran launched retaliatory strikes on the Gulf states.

Puffs of white smoke from missile interceptions were glimpsed in the skies over Dubai, while billows of dark smoke rose over its port of Jebel Ali, one of the busiest in the Middle East.

Two people were hurt after shrapnel fell from drones after an interception by air defences over two houses in Dubai, one of several Gulf Arab cities that pride themselves on stability.

Iran, which had said it would target US bases if attacked, hit a range of other targets, keeping the major oil-producing Gulf on edge.

Trump said the air strikes aimed to end a decades-long threat from Iran and ensure it could not develop a nuclear weapon. He also sought to justify a risky gambit that seemed to contradict his professed opposition to American involvement in complex overseas conflicts.