Israel Struck Iran Assembly of Experts While They Met, Kan Says

The Israeli military appeared to attack Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the clerical body tasked with choosing the next supreme leader, on Tuesday.

Both Iranian and Israeli media reported a strike on an Assembly of Experts site in Qom, a city south of Tehran. But they differed on the outcome. Israel’s Kan News, citing a senior Israeli official, said the assembly was meeting to pick a replacement for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said no such meeting was taking place at the time.

Fars, another Iranian news agency, said the assembly is conducting voting sessions remotely and by other secure methods. The announcement of a new leader could come soon, it reported.

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US President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington of “another hit today on the new leadership” and said it was “pretty substantial.” He did not elaborate.

The Assembly of Experts is a Shia clerical body with 88 members. It is expected to soon choose a leader after Khamenei, who ruled Iran since 1989, was killed in Israeli and US strikes on Saturday.

A temporary leadership council is in place until a successor is appointed. It’s made up of three people: President Masoud Pezeshkian, senior cleric Ayatollah Alireza Arafi and Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, a hardliner who serves as the head of the regime’s judiciary.

Khamenei’s second-eldest son, Mojtaba, who Iranian media have reported is alive is widely speculated to be a front-runner to succeed his father.

The Islamic Republic’s Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, on Sunday said a new supreme leader could be chosen within days.