Politics
Khamenei’s son is selected as Iran’s supreme leader; 7th U.S. service member killed
WASHINGTON — The U.S. and Israeli war against Iran entered its ninth day Sunday with no clear path toward de-escalation, as the U.S. announced a seventh American service member had been killed and Iranian state TV reported the selection of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s son as his successor.
Meanwhile, the price of oil surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time in 3½ years.
President Trump said deploying American ground troops to the Middle East remains under consideration and Iran’s foreign minister rejected calls for a ceasefire.
Trump said last week that Mojtaba Khamenei would be an “unacceptable” choice to replace his father, the 86-year-old leader who was killed on the first day of U.S. and Israeli attacks. The clerical body in charge of choosing Iran’s next supreme leader selected him anyway, state TV reported Sunday.
The younger Khamenei, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, has never held government office, but has long been a quiet force within his father’s inner circle. As supreme leader, he will play a central role in deciding Iran’s war strategy moving forward, with the powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps answering to him.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his selection.
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Saturday, Trump declined to rule out the possibility of sending U.S. forces inside Iran, saying it could “possibly happen” as the conflict intensifies.
“There would have to be a very good reason,” Trump said. “I would say if we ever did that they would be so decimated that they wouldn’t be able to fight at the ground level.”
His remarks came ahead of another relentless day of bombings in Iran, and as desalination plants critical to civilian water supplies in the arid region came under attack on both sides of the conflict.
The United States military on Sunday announced that an American service member died Saturday night of injuries sustained March 1 in Saudi Arabia during Iran’s “initial attacks” on U.S. allies and facilities across the region, in response to U.S. and Israeli strikes. The service member was not immediately identified, pending notification of family.
In addition to the seven U.S. service members killed in the war, a National Guard soldier died Friday of a “health-related incident” in Kuwait, where he had been deployed, the military said. The cause of death was under review.
Other deaths were also reported in the region. Israel reported two of its soldiers were killed in fighting in southern Lebanon — its first military deaths of the war — while Saudi Arabia reported two people were killed and 12 wounded by a military projectile that fell in a residential area of Al Kharj.
The death toll in Iran has been difficult to nail down, but Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations on Friday put the number at more than 1,300.
Iran has said it is prepared to continue fighting the war despite sustaining heavy losses and would be ready to fight American ground troops if they set foot in the country.
“We have very brave soldiers who are waiting for any enemy who enters into our soil to fight with them, and to kill them and destroy them,” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
Araghchi added that Iran is not considering a ceasefire at this time. He said the United States and Israel would first need to explain “why they started this aggression and then guarantee there would be a permanent end of the war.”
“Unless we get to that, I think we need to continue fighting for the sake of our people and our security,” he said.
Araghchi also pushed back on Trump’s demand last week that the president be involved in determining Iran’s future leadership as a condition to ending the conflict.
“We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader,” Araghchi said. “It’s only the business of the Iranian people, and nobody else’s business.”
In addition to mounting deaths and widespread destruction, the economic toll of the war has also continued to rise, particularly in energy markets — with oil prices jumping above $100 a barrel on Sunday.
“If the war continues like this, there will be neither a way to sell oil nor have the ability to produce it,” Iran’s parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said in a social media post Sunday. He added that the war would affect not just the U.S., but also the rest of the world “due to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s delusions.”
Israeli strikes Sunday hit an oil storage facility in Tehran, marking what appears to be the first time a civil industrial facility has been targeted in the war. Black smoke billowed over the Iranian capital, with officials there warning of the hazardous health effects for residents.
“By targeting fuel depots, the aggressors are releasing hazardous materials and toxic substances into the air, poisoning civilians, devastating the environment, and endangering lives on a massive scale,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said on X.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Sunday that there’s a “fear premium in the marketplace” and sought to assure Americans that the soaring oil prices are a short-term problem.
“We never know exactly the time frame of this,” Wright said in an interview with CNN’s “State of the Union.” “But in the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months, thing.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the same message in an interview with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” calling the rising gas prices a “short-term disruption.”
“Ultimately taking out the rogue Iranian regime is going to be a good thing for the oil industry,” Leavitt said. “Those prices are going to come back down just like they have over the course of the past year, because of President Trump’s American energy dominance agenda.”
The strike on the oil storage facility came as Netanyahu promised “many surprises” for the next phase of the conflict.
Israel also claimed Sunday to have destroyed the Tehran headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard air force, which it said operated Iran’s “ballistic missile command, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) array, and other air force units.” It also said it had killed five top commanders in the Revolutionary Guard who were “hiding in a civilian hotel” in central Beirut, Lebanon.
Crucial civilian infrastructure also came under attack, on both sides of the conflict.
Bahrain denounced what it said was an Iranian attack on one of its desalination plants — facilities that supply water to millions of people in the parched deserts of the Persian Gulf. Araghchi said a U.S. airstrike had damaged an Iranian desalination plan on Qeshm Island first.
“Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences. The U.S. set this precedent, not Iran,” Araghchi wrote on X.
The United States has also come under scrutiny after evidence suggested that an American strike was probably responsible for an explosion at an Iranian elementary school that killed more than 165 people, most of them children.
Trump administration officials have said that the matter is under investigation and that no determination has been made as to who was responsible for the strike. But on Saturday, Trump said Iran was to blame for the explosion.
“It was done by Iran,” he told reporters. “They’re very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.”
Asked Sunday whether Iran had any evidence that the strike was conducted by the Americans, Araghchi said that it had to have been either the U.S. or Israeli military and that Trump’s suggestion that Iran was responsible for the attack was “funny.”
“It is our school, these are our students and our girls, and they are attacked by an American fighter, a jet fighter, and they have been killed. Why [is] Iran responsible?” Araghchi said.
Other world leaders and nations have called for a halt to fighting and added their own estimates to its toll.
Lebanon said more than half a million people have been displaced by the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.
French President Emmanuel Macron said he had spoken with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Sunday, and urged him to stop strikes in the region. Macron is the first Western leader to speak with Pezeshkian since the war began, the Associated Press reported.
Pope Leo XIV wrote on X on Sunday that reports out of Iran and the wider Middle East “continue to cause deep dismay and raise the fear that the conflict will expand, and that other countries in the region, including dear Lebanon, may once again sink into instability.”
He asked the world to pray “for the roar of bombs to cease, weapons to fall silent, and space to open for dialogue, in which people’s voices may be heard.”
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President Donald Trump is taking his feud with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., to the libertarian lawmaker’s home turf on Wednesday.
Trump is expected to hold an event in Hebron, Kentucky, on Wednesday, the Republican Party of Kentucky announced on social media Monday. It’s located in the northern part of the state’s 4th Congressional District, which Massie represents.
Massie’s primary rival, Ed Gallrein, will attend the Hebron event, his campaign confirmed to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, while deferring all other questions on the matter to the White House.
Massie himself will miss the event due to a previously scheduled official engagement, his spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
KHANNA AND MASSIE THREATEN TO FORCE A VOTE ON IRAN AS PROSPECT OF US ATTACK LOOMS
President Donald Trump will be visiting Rep. Thomas Massie’s congressional district on Wednesday. (Win McNamee/Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)
When asked about the visit, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told Fox News Digital, “President Trump will visit the great states of Ohio and Kentucky on Wednesday to tout his economic victories and detail his Administration’s aggressive, ongoing efforts to lower prices and make America more affordable.”
The president has thrown his considerable influence behind Gallrein to unseat Massie after the GOP lawmaker publicly defied Trump on multiple occasions.
MASSIE, KHANNA TO VISIT DOJ TO REVIEW UNREDACTED EPSTEIN FILES
Massie most recently was one of two House Republicans to vote to stop Trump’s joint operation in Iran with Israel, though the legislation was successfully blocked by the majority of GOP lawmakers and a handful of Democrats.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House. (Ed Gallrein congressional campaign)
He was also one of two Republicans to vote against Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” last year.
Trump in turn has hurled a slew of personal attacks against Massie, including calling him “weak and pathetic” in a statement endorsing Gallrein in October.
“He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left. Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump posted on Truth Social at the time, one of numerous criticisms targeting the Kentucky Republican through the years.
He called Massie the “worst Republican congressman” in July amid Massie’s bipartisan push to force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to release its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
Then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, and Rep. Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But Massie has so far appeared to defy political gravity despite making political enemies out of both Trump and House GOP leaders.
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He handily defeated multiple primary challengers in 2024 and 2022, despite public feuds with Trump, and has served his district since 2012.
Gallrein is a retired Navy SEAL and farmer who launched his campaign days after Trump made his endorsement. Their primary election day is May 19.
As anxiety mounts among California Democrats about the potential of a Republican being elected governor, the state party will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on polling to assess the viability of the sprawling field of candidates hoping to replace termed-out Gov. Gavin Newsom, according to plans released Tuesday.
The move comes after nearly every Democratic candidate refused party leaders’ call last week to withdraw from the race to avoid splitting the vote in the June primary — an outcome that could lead to a Republican being elected to statewide office for the first time in two decades.
“Candidates have filed, and now they’ve got the opportunity to showcase their viability, their path to win. I want to simply ensure that everybody has information to fully understand the current state of the race,” said Rusty Hicks, the leader of the California Democratic Party.
As campaign season ramps up, the series of six polls will allow “candidates, supporters, the media, voters, anyone and everyone to have a clear understanding of what is or is not happening in this particular race,” he said.
The filing deadline to appear on the June 2 ballot was Friday. Three days earlier, Hicks released an open letter urging candidates who did not have a path to victory to withdraw from the race. Of the nine prominent Democrats who had announced runs for governor, only one heeded his call: former state Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon.
That means the eight other candidates’ names will appear on the ballot, regardless of whether they decide to later drop out. And that creates the possibility of a Republican winning the race because of how California elections are decided.
The state has a voter-approved top-two primary system, under which the two candidates who receive the most votes in the June primary advance to the November general election, regardless of party.
Two prominent Republicans will appear on the ballot: former conservative commentator Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco. Even though Democratic voters outnumber Republicans nearly 2 to 1, and the state’s electorate last elevated Republicans to statewide office in 2006, it is mathematically possible for Democrats to splinter the vote, allowing the two GOP candidates to advance.
Under such a scenario, not only would Republicans be guaranteed the leadership of the nation’s most-populous state, but Democratic voter turnout also would probably be depressed in November, potentially affecting down-ballot races such as those that could determine control of Congress.
Hicks’ call last week prompted concerns among candidates of color, including former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, that the effort was aimed at every nonwhite candidate in the race.
The state party chairman responded that his letter was not aimed at any specific candidate.
“It’s not something I lose sleep over,” Hicks said when asked about the racial claims. But he added that the voter surveys will be conducted by Los Angeles-based Evitarus, the state’s only Black- and Latino-led full-service polling firm, and will oversample historically underrepresented communities: Latino, Black and Asian American voters.
Hicks said the polling will cost “multiple six figures” but did not specify the exact amount.
The first poll will be released on March 24, and then five additional surveys will come out every seven to 10 days until voters start receiving mail ballots in early May.
“We’re putting this forward to ensure everyone is armed with the information they need to clearly have an eyes-wide-open assessment of where the state of the race currently is between now and when ballots land in the mailboxes of voters,” Hicks said.
Politics
Trump reveals top issues GOP should focus on to secure midterms victory: ‘I’ve never been more confident’
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President Donald Trump outlined five key items he believes will tip the upcoming midterm elections in the GOP’s favor — if Republicans can muscle them through Congress.
“No transgender mutilation surgery for our children,” Trump told an audience at the Republican Members’ Issues Conference. “Voter ID, citizenship [verification], mail-in ballots, we don’t want men playing in women’s sports.”
“It’s the best of Trump. Those are the best of Trump. This is the number one priority, it should be, for the House,” Trump said.
Trump’s exhortations to Republican lawmakers come as the GOP wages an uphill campaign to hang on to a controlling majority in the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. He framed his legislative priorities as a way for Republicans to capitalize on popular demands within the GOP base that would increase their chances of preserving a Republican governing trifecta.
President Donald Trump gestures as he boards Air Force One before departing Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, on March 1, 2026. (Mandel Ngan / AFP via Getty Images)
HOUSE REPUBLICANS PUSH ELECTION OVERHAUL WITH VOTER ID, MAIL-IN BALLOT CHANGES AHEAD OF MIDTERMS
Currently, Republicans hold just four more seats than Democrats in the House of Representatives.
The GOP holds six more than Democrats in the Senate.
To keep the numbers in their favor, Republicans will need to beat historical trends. In the vast majority of past cases, parties that capture the White House in presidential elections face blowback in the midterms. Notably, the last time a majority party gained seats in both chambers of Congress in the midterms came under the Bush administration in 2002, following devastating attacks on the World Trade Center.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, left, and President Donald Trump shake hands during an Invest America roundtable in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, District of Columbia, on June 9, 2025. (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS, TRUMP RUN INTO SENATE ROADBLOCK ON VOTER ID BILL
Trump said he believes Republicans have a shot at bucking the trend come November if they focus on his list.
“It’ll guarantee the midterms,” Trump said of his legislative priorities.
Republicans have already taken strikes towards two of them through the SAVE America Act, a piece of legislation that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and cast a ballot. That bill cleared the House last month for a second time in the 119th Congress.
Its future is uncertain in the Senate, where Republicans would need the assistance of seven Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to defeat a filibuster. Democrats, for their part, believe the legislation would disenfranchise voters who cannot readily provide documented proof of citizenship through a passport, REAL ID, or birth certificate.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D. has promised a vote on the package despite its long odds.
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, talks with a guest during a “Only Citizens Vote Bus Tour” rally in Upper Senate Park to urge Congress to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act on Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
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Several members have introduced bills on transgender issues, although none of them have cleared either chamber.
“I’ve never been more confident that if we keep these promises and deliver on this popular agenda, the American people will stand with us in overwhelming numbers, just as they did in 2024,” Trump said.
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