Any replacement selected to replace Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed by Israel on the first day of the war with Iran on Saturday, will be in Israel’s crosshairs, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned on Wednesday.

“Any leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime will be a clear target for elimination,” Katz said. “The prime minister and I instructed the IDF to prepare and act by all means to accomplish the mission … We will continue acting with full force, together with our American partners, crush the regime’s abilities and create the conditions for the Iranian people to topple and replace it.” 

Katz’s remarks came after widespread reports that the slain supreme leader’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, is his likely successor. 

Israel struck the building housing the Assembly of Experts, made up of senior clerics who would choose the new supreme leader. Initial reports stated officials counting the votes were killed.

Israel continued to strike the Iranian regime’s centers of power, including command centers of the Basij paramilitary force and internal security “used by the Iranian regime to maintain control throughout Iran and maintain the regime’s situational assessments,” the IDF stated.

The CIA is reportedly acting to destabilize the regime by arming Kurdish forces, according to CNN and Reuters, with the Trump administration said to be in talks with Kurdish leaders in Iraq, in addition to Iranian opposition leaders, to try to foment an armed uprising. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have repeatedly attacked Kurdish groups since war broke out over the weekend. 

Also Wednesday, an Israeli Air Force F-35I fighter jet shot down an Iranian Air Force YAK-130 fighter jet over Tehran, marking the first time an F-35 jet shot down a manned fighter aircraft, the IDF stated.

The IDF also continued to hunt missile launchers to degrade Iran’s ability to shoot large barrages around the region, striking a facility used to launch, produce and store ballistic missiles in Isfahan. 

Iranian missile attacks on Israel injured 45 on Tuesday, according to the Magen David Adom emergency service. From the start of the war with Iran, there have been 12 fatalities and 404 additional casualties in Israel, including two severely injured and 288 who were injured making their way to shelters.

The Iranian regime has made increasing use of civilian structures as shields, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies found, noting that Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ismail Baghaei held a press conference in a school on Tuesday, and police and other security forces used schools as bases of operations. 

The IDF sent emergency evacuation warnings to residents of over a dozen villages and towns in Lebanon ahead of continued strikes against Hezbollah terrorists and facilities on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump said over the weekend that Iran’s new leadership has made overtures to restart diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. — which he plans to accept — after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country. 

Still, the president warned that strikes would continue until their objectives had been achieved. 

Trump made the comments while speaking to The Atlantic on Sunday morning, one of a series of interviews he gave after launching a joint military operation against Iran alongside Israel on Saturday. The president has been touting Operation Epic Fury to journalists as an immediate success, arguing that the removal of Khamenei and 47 others in senior Iranian leadership has provided a window for diplomacy as the U.S. military operation swiftly advances.

“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”

The commander-in-chief declined to say when he plans to begin engaging with the Iranians, instead noting that most of the Iranians involved in past negotiations with the U.S. are now deceased.

“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,” Trump said. “They should have done it sooner. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”

Asked if he was willing to extend the bombing campaign in order to support a popular uprising in Iran, should it unfold, the president was similarly coy, telling the outlet: “I have to look at the situation at the time it happens … You can’t give an answer to that question.”

In a video posted to his Truth Social platform on Sunday afternoon, however, Trump spoke directly to the protesters, calling upon “all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”

Further illuminating his thinking, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday shortly after the killing of Khamenei, “We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us … Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves. That process should soon be starting.” 

“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective” of world peace, he wrote.

In an interview on Saturday evening with CBS News’ Robert Costa, Trump said he believes that the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed Khamenei made diplomacy “much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously, because they are getting beat up badly.”

As for the military operation itself, Trump suggested in subsequent conversations on Sunday with The Daily Mail and The New York Times that the U.S. could be involved for another four to five weeks. 

“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so,” Trump told the U.K. tabloid. “It’s always been about a four week process so — as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks or less.”

He repeated the four to five week timeline in interviews with Axios’ Barak Ravid on Saturday and The New York Times on Sunday.

“I can go long and take over the whole thing,” Trump told Ravid by phone, “or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs].’”

Trump later predicted to Ravid that, “In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack.”

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) echoed the president’s predictions, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump has “no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside Iran.”

“The president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that’s designed not only to continue to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile arsenal, many more missiles than the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability,” said Cotton, one of the president’s more hawkish GOP allies on Capitol Hill. 

“Now obviously one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down, and the president would never leave a pilot behind,” he continued. “So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any downed pilot. But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.”

Columbia University distanced itself from Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of over 80 university student groups, after it posted “death to America” in Farsi in response to U.S. strikes on Iran, denying that current students are behind the account. 

“Marg bar Amrika,” CUAD posted on X on Saturday after U.S. and Israel’s joint strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader — using a phrase that was frequently invoked by Khamenei. The post was deleted, but CUAD doubled down, writing in a new post, “X forced us to delete our ‘marg bar amrika’ tweet in order to gain back access to our account but the sentiment still stands.”

Columbia responded that “the group that calls itself ‘CUAD’ is not a recognized student group, or affiliated in any way with the University.”

“There is no evidence that anyone currently in control of their account is a current Columbia student, staff, or faculty member. They are illegally using the Columbia name,” the university said in a statement. 

But a source familiar with the university’s actions told Jewish Insider that Columbia does not know who controls the account.

Last year, Columbia served the email associated with CUAD’s social media accounts with a cease and desist letter and sent takedown requests to the social media platforms carrying them, the source said.

CUAD then changed its account name from Columbia University Apartheid Divest to CU Apartheid Divest, stopped using an alma mater logo, changed its status on X to be a “commentary account” and added a statement to its bio about being “proudly unrecognized” by Columbia. 

The source said the university is continuing to pursue all available legal action on the matter. 

CUAD was formed in 2016 and gained renewed support since Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. It consists of groups run by current Columbia students, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, Student Workers of Columbia and Columbia Social Workers for Palestine. In an updated statement on Sunday evening, Columbia said that currently recognized student groups cannot affiliate with CUAD. 

Columbia announced last July — about a week before it reached a settlement with the  Trump administration to restore federal funding — that it would no longer recognize CUAD, which organized the 2024 campus anti-Israel encampment and several other demonstrations against the war in Gaza, some of which turned violent. At the time, Khamenei praised such protests, telling students they were “on the right side of history.”

CUAD’s Instagram page was disabled last year for promoting violence.  

The U.S. and Israeli militaries planned attacks on Iran for months, marking “unprecedented cooperation,” Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF’s chief of staff, said on Saturday, hours after the launch of what Israel has called Operation Roaring Lion and the U.S. has called Operation Epic Fury.

“In recent months, under the direction of the political leadership, I have led — in coordination with my counterparts, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commander of CENTCOM — a deep and comprehensive joint operational planning process. This reflects unprecedented cooperation between the IDF and the United States military,” Zamir said.

An IDF official speaking on condition of anonymity said that the two militaries “worked for thousands of hours” to increase its target bank “by hundreds of percent.”

The plan centered on “an intelligence effort … to identify an operational opportunity at the moment when senior regime officials would convene,” the official said. The IDF struck three such gatherings simultaneously and killed “several senior figures.”   

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed in a video statement that one of those targets was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, saying that the IDF likely killed him.

“Today, in a surprise attack, we destroyed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound in the heart of Tehran,” he said. “For three and a half decades, this tyrant sent terror throughout the world, immiserated his nation and worked all the time on his plan to destroy Israel.”

“That plan is gone and there are many signs that the tyrant is gone,” Netanyahu said. President Donald Trump later confirmed the news.

Netanyahu said that Israel plans to hit “1,000 terror sites” in the coming days.

Directing his remarks at the people of Iran, Netanyahu said, “Soon your moment will come in which you must go out on the streets … Help has arrived and now the time has come for you to unite for a historic mission … to bring down the regime and ensure your future.”

The strikes on Iran’s missile array and air-defense systems by 200 fighter jets were the Israeli Air Force’s largest-ever flyover, the IDF Spokesperson’s office said.

The IAF fighter jets struck 500 targets throughout western and central Iran, such as one in Tabriz, which was used for Iran’s surface-to-surface missiles. Another strike targeted an advanced SA-65 aerial-defense system near Kermanshah in western Iran, the IDF said.

The IDF sent warnings via social media to Iranian civilians living near weapons production and military infrastructure facilities: “Dear citizens, for your safety and well-being, we urge you to immediately evacuate these areas and remain outside of them until further notice. Your presence in these locations puts your lives at risk.”

Iran launched missiles and attack drones at Israeli population centers throughout the day, including ones that include cluster munitions, the IDF said. 

“Cluster weapons are designed to disperse over a large area and maximize the chances of a harmful strike. Iran goes to great lengths in trying to maximize harm to Israeli civilians,” Nadav Shoshani, the IDF international media spokesperson, stated.

Zamir said that Operation Roaring Lion is “a significant, decisive, and unprecedented operation, to dismantle the capabilities of the Iranian terrorist regime — capabilities that constitute an ongoing existential threat to the security of the State of Israel. This is an operation to secure our existence and our future here, in the land of our forefathers, for generations to come.”

Since last year’s Operation Rising Lion, as the IDF called the 12-day war with Iran, “the radical Iranian terrorist regime has not abandoned its vision or its hostile intentions to advance its plan to destroy Israel. It has continued to promote its nuclear project, restore and accelerate ballistic missile production, and destabilize the region through the funding and arming of terrorist proxies,” Zamir said.

The IDF chief of staff also tied the operation to the holiday of Purim, which begins on Monday night, and celebrates the Jews of the Persian empire overcoming an attempted genocide. 

“The Book of Esther teaches us that responsibility for our destiny rests first and foremost in our own hands — in courage, initiative, unity and the willingness to fight for our right to live here in freedom and in peace,” Zamir said. “Soldiers and commanders of the IDF… carry with you the vision of our forefathers.”

Shoshani wrote in a blog post that the timing of the operation was due to “a dangerous acceleration in [Iran’s] capabilities,” including long-range missile production and continued proxy funding.

“Israel reached a point where the threat was no longer ‘developing,’” Shoshani wrote. “The threat was direct and imminent.”

The objective of the strike, Shoshani said, was to “fundamentally reduce and degrade Iranian terrorist regime capabilities, eliminating long-term existential threats to the state of Israel.” 

The IDF also called up 70,000 reservists to serve on Israel’s borders, the West Bank and Gaza to stop any infiltration attempts, as well as search and rescue forces prepared to go to the site of any Iranian missile strikes.

Israelis throughout the country spent the day going in and out of safe rooms and bomb shelters at the sound of air raid sirens, which blared more frequently in Israel’s densely populated center, reflecting the area Iran targeted. 

IDF Home Front Commander Maj.-Gen. Shay Kleper said that “past experiences prove that the public’s strict following of protocol has saved many lives. The grit and responsibility of everyone is a key element in countering the threat.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar spoke about Israel’s decision to strike Iran and the operation’s objectives with 17 of his counterparts, in phone calls to Argentina, Austria, Germany, India, Italy, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, the European Union, France, Canada, Australia, Ecuador, Greece, Ethiopia, Singapore and North Macedonia.

President Donald Trump confirmed on Saturday that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran and the country’s highest political and religious authority, was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead. This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” Trump wrote. 

Israeli media reported he was killed in an Israeli strike on his compound in Tehran. He was 86.

Khamenei had led Iran since 1989, succeeding Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who took over the country as part of his Islamic Revolution in 1979. Over more than three decades in power, he oversaw major shifts in Iran’s domestic politics, military posture and regional strategy, moves that resulted in the Islamic Republic becoming the world’s leading exporter of terrorism through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.

As supreme leader, Khamenei exercised ultimate authority over the armed forces, judiciary, state broadcasting and key political appointments. He maintained final say over defense and foreign policy, including Iran’s nuclear program, and appointed top commanders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 

The IRGC became the primary instrument of Khamenei’s rule. He cultivated and empowered it for decades, and the IRGC in turn underwrote his domestic authority and Iran’s regional ambitions across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza through what he called the “Axis of Resistance.”

His foreign policy was defined by two poles of opposition: the United States, which he called Iran’s “No. 1 enemy,” and Israel, whose destruction he repeatedly called for in rhetoric that mixed geopolitical calculation with antisemitic tropes. Under his leadership, Iran became what the U.S. State Department designated the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.

No successor has been publicly named, and with much of the IRGC’s senior leadership also reported killed in Saturday’s strikes, the question of who fills the vacuum left by Khamenei will mark a pivotal moment in Iran’s history.