Iran holds Khamenei’s funeral, names interim leaders on Day 2 of war with US and Israel

Israel’s military said on Sunday it had destroyed nearly half of Iran’s missile arsenal, adding that the Islamic Republic was producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles every month.

“During our operations, we destroyed nearly half of the Iranian regime’s missile arsenal and prevented the production of another 1,500 missiles,” military spokeswoman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a televised statement.

“The government recently produced a large number of surface-to-surface missiles per month and intends to increase production to hundreds per month.”

The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah vowed on Sunday to take revenge for the US-Israeli war on its key ally, Iran.

“We will do our duty to counter the violence” of the US and Israel, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a statement, according to French news agency AFP. Qassem said Hezbollah will not leave the “field of honor and resistance.”

Israel did it hit Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent yearskilling many of the group’s leaders and reducing its critical firepower.

This group has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the US, Israel and many other nations.

Reuters news agency cited Iran’s state-run student news agency ISNA as saying on Sunday that a longtime senior member of the Islamic Republic’s powerful Guardian Council, Alireza Arafi, has been appointed to the Leadership Council, a body tasked with fulfilling the role of supreme leader until the Supreme Council of Experts appoints a successor to Ayatollah Khamenei.

Arafi would join President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeibe in the Interim Leadership Council, ISNA said.

If Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, appointed by the regime as one of the country’s three interim leaders, was planning to distance the remnants of a democratic state from its supreme leader who was killed in an attempt to survive the US-Israeli attack, he showed no signs of it in his first public comments on Sunday.

Iran’s interim government “considers blood and revenge against the perpetrators and leaders of this crime as a duty of its legitimate right,” Pezeshkian said in a statement posted online by Iran’s state media.

“The assassination of the highest political leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the great country of Shiites,” he said, referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose funeral was held on Sunday in Tehran, “by the American-Zionist axis, a declaration of open war against Muslims, especially Shiites in the world.”

He said Iran will “fulfill this great task and mission” of retaliating against Israel and the US “with all its might.”

CBS news producer Seyed Bathaei in Tehran said people were gathering Sunday in the Iranian capital ahead of the funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

The funeral was to be held at the University of Tehran.

Khamenei has ruled Iran since 1989 as the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

There were shouts of joy and celebrations in the streets of Tehran and other cities on Saturday when Israel and President Trump confirmed that Khamenei had been killed in a US-Israeli attack. But there were also reports of protests in other parts of Iran on Sunday denouncing the war and demanding revenge.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate politician one of the few top leaders to escape alive in Saturday’s strikes, will lead the country along with two other officials in a transition period following Khamenei’s assassination, Iranian state television said Sunday.

Earlier, an Iranian official said that the leadership council will handle the work of the late ayatollah until his successor is officially announced.

“In accordance with the constitution, a leadership council will be established to manage the work of the Supreme Leader until a successor is chosen,” said the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, in a statement.

State news agency IRNA said that along with Pezeshkian, the speaker of Iran’s parliament and the head of Iran’s judiciary will rule until a new supreme leader is elected.

Charlie D’Agata of CBS News said that the sky over the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv was filled throughout the night with the sound of warplanes and missile defenses blocking the attack of Iran, which made the nerves high as the Middle East and the whole world wondered what would be the final result of the war caused by the US and Israel.

Elliot Ackerman, an American writer, former member of the US special forces and former CIA Special Activities Officer, said that there are still great dangers, even though many of the leadership of the brutal Iranian regime were killed in Saturday’s strikes.

“What we might have is impotence,” Ackerman said, as the remnants of the Iranian regime announced an interim leadership. He said it is possible that the Iranian society that has been disturbed for a long time will rise up and overthrow the Islamic Republic that has ruled the country since the revolution in 1979.

But it was not “out of the realm of possibility” that the hardline remnants of the regime could retain control of the country, which he said would be a disaster for the region.

Rep. Rick Crawford, the chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Sunday that the US and Israeli strikes will likely continue in the coming days, mainly aimed at eliminating the remaining missile launch capabilities in southern Iran.

“It’s going to take some patience,” Crawford said, but he said “the conditions on the ground are ready for regime change, and we’re praying for the Iranian people” to seize what he said was an opportunity presented by the war to overthrow their government.

While there was a roar of joy and thousands of people in Iran celebrated the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday, there were also protests in the country against the US-Israeli war, as crowds gathered on Sunday in southern Iran demanding revenge, according to Iranian media.

Similar protests broke out in Tehran on Sunday and in the city center of Yazd, Iranian media said.

There were also angry protests in other countries, with hundreds of protesters trying to storm the heavily fenced Green Zone in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where the US embassy is located.

In Karachi, Pakistan, security forces killed eight people when hundreds of protesters tried to storm the US consulate in the capital, according to local emergency officials.

And in Indian-administered Kashmir, French news agency AFP said several thousand people demonstrated and chanted anti-Israel and anti-US slogans on Sunday.

The US embassy in Oman’s capital Muscat, on the other hand, warned workers and other Americans in the city to take shelter because of unspecified “ongoing activities outside Muscat”.

For the first time since the US-Israeli bombing campaign began on Saturday, Israel has struck “the heart of Tehran,” the Israeli Defense Forces said on Sunday.

“The Air Force, led by Military Intelligence, has now launched multiple strikes against the targets of the Iranian terrorist regime in the heart of Tehran,” the IDF said.

“In the past day, the Air Force carried out several strikes to gain air superiority and open the way to Tehran,” the IDF said.

Iranian media said on Sunday that the country’s military targeted US bases in northern Iraq in the Kurdistan region, and in the Persian Gulf, in response to ongoing Israeli and US strikes across the country.

“A few minutes ago, the pilots of the air force of the Islamic Republic of Iran successfully bombed American bases in the countries of the Persian Gulf and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq in several stages of operations,” state TV quoted the Iranian army as saying.

Iran has fired missiles and drones at US bases since the US-Israeli joint strikes began on Saturday, as well as at Israel and other Middle Eastern countries where the US has bases. Civil infrastructure in many nations was also hit.

The board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, will hold a special meeting on Monday at its headquarters in Vienna to discuss the situation in Iran.

The meeting is at the request of Russia regarding “military strikes by the United States and Israel against the territory of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” it said in a statement on Saturday.

Russia is a major ally of Iran.

Last week, Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA, said Most of Iran’s nuclear weapons “were still there, in abundance” despite US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June 2025.

President Trump said on his Truth Social forum earlier Sunday that, “Iran has just indicated that it will strike harder today, harder than ever before.”

In response, he wrote, “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A STRENGTH THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN!”

Mr. Trump had previously said that the “heavy and targeted bombing” of Iran “will continue, uninterrupted for a week or, as long as necessary.”

The speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in a televised speech on Sunday, “You have crossed our red line and you must pay the price. We will deliver such devastating blows that you too will be encouraged to plead,” according to the Associated Press.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard also said on Sunday it would launch “the worst campaign in the history of the Iranian military” targeting US and Israeli military bases.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s compound in the heart of Tehran was heavily damaged in US-Israeli strikes, satellite images show.

One photo shows black smoke billowing from the palace, which appears to have been reduced to a pile of rubble.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel attacked the palace the next day, Saturday. He later said that there were growing signs that Khamenei had been killed in the strike.

Israeli forces also said on Saturday they had killed several Iranian leaders, including Iran’s Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh.

CBS/AP