Live updates: Iran holds funeral for Khamenei, names interim leaders on Day 2 of war with U.S. and Israel

The Reuters news agency cited Iran’s state-run student news agency ISNA as saying Sunday that a longtime senior member of the Islamic Republic’s powerful Guardian Council, Alireza Arafi, had been appointed to the Leadership Council, a body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader’s role until the regime’s Assembly of Experts elects a replacement for Ayatollah Khamenei. 

Arafi was to join President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chief Justice Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejeibe on the temporary Leadership Council, ISNA said.

If Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, named by the regime as one of three interim leaders of the country, was planning to distance the remnants of the theocracy from its slain supreme leader in a bid to survive the U.S.-Israeli assault, he showed no signs of that in his first public comments on Sunday.

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

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

He said Iran would “fulfill this great responsibility and duty” to retaliate against Israel and the U.S. “with all its might.”

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

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

Khamenei ruled over Iran from 1989 as the second supreme leader of the Islamic Republic regime.

There were shouts of joy and celebrations in the streets of Tehran and other cities on Saturday when Israel and President Trump confirmed Khamenei had been killed in the U.S. and Israeli attacks. But there were also reports of protests in some parts of Iran on Sunday denouncing the war and calling for retribution. 

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, a moderate politician who was among the few very senior leaders to escape Saturday’s blistering strikes alive, will lead the country along with two other officials in a transitional period following the killing of Khamenei, Iranian state television said Sunday.

Earlier, an Iranian official said a leadership council would handle the late ayatollah’s duties until a successor is formally announced. 

“In accordance with the constitution, a leadership council will be established to assume the responsibilities of the Supreme Leader until a successor is elected,” the secretary of Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said 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 would be in charge until a new top leader is chosen.  

CBS News’ Charlie D’Agata said the skies over Israel’s capital Tel Aviv buzzed overnight with the sound of fighter jets and missile defenses intercepting Iranian attacks, keeping nerves high as the Middle East and the entire world wondered what the final outcome of the war sparked by the U.S. and Israel might be.

Elliot Ackerman, an American author, former member of the U.S. special forces and former CIA Special Activities Officer, said there were still significant risks, even with much of the brutal Iranian regime’s leadership killed in Saturday’s strikes.

“What we’ll potentially have is a power vacuum,” Ackerman said, as the remnants of the Iranian regime announced interim leadership. He said it was possible Iran’s long-stifled civil society would rise up and topple the Islamic Republic regime that has ruled over the country since the 1979 revolution.

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

Rep. Rick Crawford, chair of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, told CBS News on Sunday that the U.S. and Israeli strikes would likely continue in the coming days, particularly aimed at taking out remaining missile launch capabilities in southern Iran. 

“It’s gonna take a little bit of patience,” Crawford said, but he said the “conditions on the ground are ripe for regime change, and we pray for the Iranian people” to seize what he said was the opportunity presented by the war to overthrow their government.

While there were shouts 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 U.S.-Israeli war, with crowds gathering on Sunday in southern Iran demanding vengeance, according to Iran’s state-run media.

Similar protests erupted in Tehran on Sunday and in the central city of Yazd, Iranian media said.

There were also angry demonstrations in other countries, with hundreds of protesters trying to storm the heavily fortified Green Zone in Iraq’s capital Baghdad, where the U.S. embassy is located.

In Karachi, Pakistan, security forces killed eight people as hundreds of protesters tried to storm the U.S. consulate in the massive city, according to local emergency services.

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

The U.S. Embassy in Oman’s capital Muscat, meanwhile, warned staff and other Americans in the city to shelter in place due to unspecified “ongoing activity outside of Muscat.” 

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

“The Air Force, guided by Military Intelligence, has now launched a broad wave of strikes toward targets of the Iranian terror regime in the heart of Tehran,” the IDF said.

“Over the past day, the Air Force conducted extensive strikes to achieve air superiority and open the path to Tehran,” the IDF added.

Iran’s state-run media said Sunday that the country’s armed forces had targeted U.S. bases in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan region, and in the Persian Gulf, in response to ongoing Israeli and U.S. strikes across the country.

“A few minutes ago, pilots of the air forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran successfully bombed U.S. bases in the countries of the Persian Gulf and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq over several phases of operations,” state TV cited the Iranian army as saying.

Iran has fired volleys of missiles and drones at American bases since the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes began on Saturday, as well as at Israel and other nations in the Middle East where the U.S. has bases. Civilian infrastructure in several nations was also hit.

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

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

Russia is a major ally of Iran.

Last week, Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA, said most of Iran’s nuclear materials were “still there, in large quantities” despite the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June of 2025. 

President Trump said on his Truth Social platform early Sunday that, “Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever hit before.”

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

Mr. Trump had earlier said that “heavy and pinpoint bombing” of Iran would “continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary.”

Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in a televised address Sunday, “You have crossed our red line and must pay the price. We will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg,” according to The Associated Press. 

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard also said Sunday said that it would launch “the most ferocious offensive operation in the history of the Iranian armed forces” targeting U.S. military bases and Israel. 

The compound of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in the heart of Tehran was heavily damaged in the U.S.-Israeli strikes, satellite photos show.

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

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel struck the compound early Saturday. He later said there were “growing signs” that Khamenei had been killed in the strike.

The Israeli military also said Saturday that it had killed much of Iran’s leadership, including Secretary of the Iranian Security Council Ali Shamkhani and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh.

CBS/AP