China said Sunday it “strongly condemns” the United States and Israel’s killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and called again for a halt to military actions.

The killing was “a serious violation of Iran’s sovereignty and security, a trampling on the aims and principles of the U.N. charter and the basic norms of international relations,” Beijing’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

“China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this,” it added, calling for an “immediate halting of military operations”.

The condemnation came just after Chinese state media reported a phone call between Beijing’s top diplomat Wang Yi and his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov.

During the conversation, which state news agency Xinhua said was initiated by Lavrov, Wang said the “blatant killing of a sovereign leader and the incitement of regime change” by the United States and Israel was “unacceptable.”

China is “highly concerned” that the “situation in the Middle East could be pushed into a dangerous abyss,” Wang told Lavrov, according to Xinhua.

Israeli emergency services said a barrage of missiles launched by Iran on Sunday hit residential buildings in the city of Beit Shemesh, causing damage and multiple casualties.

The volunteer medical response agency Hatzalah said there were “multiple impact sites” in the city, which is about 19 miles west of Jerusalem, “with approximately 15 casualties at this stage, most described as being in light condition.”

“United Hatzalah volunteers on the scene are providing medical care, including treatment to three children who sustained head injuries,” the group said, adding that “further injuries are being documented, and there are indications of several individuals in serious condition in the vicinity.”

Sen. Tom Cotton said Sunday that there’s “not a simple answer” as to who will lead Iran going forward. 

“There’s probably a lot of people jockeying inside Iran right now,” Cotton said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” 

“They have a very consultative, deliberative process to replace the supreme leader,” Cotton said. “There’s a reason why he didn’t want to have a clear succession plan in place.”

But Cotton would not say if there was a plan by the U.S. or Israel for a managed transition. 

“We’re in the middle of it now,” Cotton said. “We’re going to continue to hit their military capabilities, and we’re going to continue to hit the senior leadership, the ayatollahs, who have also been complicit in 47 years of heinous crimes, not only against Americans, against their own people.”

When asked by Brennan if an Iranian opposition leader had been identified to potentially take over the control, Cotton said, “the opposition is 90 million Iranians who have suffered under the brutal Islamic Republic revolutionary regime for the last 47 years.”

“We can’t necessarily dictate what course that is going to take,” Cotton said. “But the help the president promised is on the scene for probably a few weeks as we make sure that Iran’s military is no longer capable of threatening our own troops, our Arab friends in the region, and Israel, and also repressing its own people.”

An Omani port and an oil tanker off its coast were attacked Sunday, official media said, marking the first suspected Iranian strikes on the sultanate — which mediated the U.S.-Iran talks that failed to avert the war launched on Saturday by the U.S. and Israel. 

AFP correspondents also heard blasts in Dubai, Doha and Manama on Sunday, with explosions heard later in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh as Iran pressed its second day of retaliatory attacks in response to ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes.

Iran’s continued bombardment across the Persian Gulf has raised fears of a wider conflict and rattled a region long seen as a haven of peace and security in the turbulent Middle East.

“A security source reported that the commercial port of Duqm was targeted by two drones,” the Oman News Agency said in a social media post. “One drone struck a mobile workers’ accommodation, injuring one foreign worker, while debris from the other landed near fuel tanks, causing no casualties or material damage.”  

Shortly after, Oman’s Maritime Security Center said an oil tanker had been targeted off the coast. Its crew was evacuated and four of them were injured, the Oman News Agency reported.

Videos and photos posted online appeared to show the back of the tanker engulfed in flames and smoke and sinking.

CBS/AFP

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that while President Trump said there could be American casualties in the operation against Iran, there were no plans to put American boots on the ground.

“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,” Cotton said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”

Cotton said one risk of the non-ground war that the U.S. and Israel are waging is that an aircraft could be shot down, and “the president would never leave a pilot behind.” 

“So, no doubt, we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any type of downed pilot,” Cotton said. “But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, Margaret, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.” 

Britain’s defense secretary said Sunday that Iran’s “indiscriminate retaliatory attacks” included “two ballistic missiles fired in the direction of Cyprus,” but it was not believed they were “targeted” at the Mediterranean island on which the U.K. has a major military air base.

“We had two ballistic missiles fired in the direction of Cyprus,” John Healey told CBS News’ partner network BBC News, noting that British warplanes based in Cyprus, as well as in the Middle East were involved in “defensive” actions across the region.

“We are pretty sure they weren’t targeted at Cyprus, but nevertheless, it demonstrates how our bases, our personnel, military and civilians at the moment are at risk,” Healey told the BBC.

He did not say whether the Iranian missiles were intercepted, or if they just fell short of any intended targets.

Israel’s military said Sunday it was “not aware” of any U.S. or Israeli strike hitting a school in southern Iran. Iranian authorities claimed Saturday that a girl’s elementary school in the city of Minab was hit amid the strikes, killing more than 100 people, including many students.

“At this point not aware of an Israeli or an American strike there … We’re operating in an extremely accurate manner,” Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani told reporters on Sunday.

Captain Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the U.S. military’s Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East, told CBS News on Saturday that CENTCOM was aware of the reports “concerning civilian harm from ongoing military operation” and was investigating the matter.

“The protection of civilians is of utmost importance, and we will continue to take all precautions available to minimize the risk of unintended harm,” Hawkins said. “Unlike Iran, we have never – and never will – target civilians.”

Pope Leo XIV on Sunday called for an end to the “spiral of violence” in the Middle East, after the U.S. and Israel launched attacks on Iran that prompted ongoing retaliatory strikes.

“Faced with the possibility of a tragedy of enormous proportions, I appeal to the parties involved to assume the moral responsibility to stop the spiral of violence before it becomes an irreparable chasm,” Leo, the Catholic Church’s first-ever leader from the United States, told a crowd of faithful in St. Peter’s Square.

CBS/AFP

The European Union’s top diplomat, High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas, noted the uncertainty facing Iran and the entire world on Sunday, but she called it an opportunity for Iran’s people to shape their own future. 

“The death of Ali Khamenei is a defining moment in Iran’s history. What comes next is uncertain. But there is now an open path to a different Iran, one that its people may have greater freedom to shape,” Kallas said in a social media post, adding that she was in contact on behalf of the EU “with partners, including those in the region that bear the brunt of Iran’s military actions, to find practical steps for de-escalation.”

Her post was accompanied by a graphic indicating that she was in contact with foreign policy chiefs from Israel and at least six Arabic nations in the Middle East, in addition to Turkey and the Group of Seven bloc of the world’s biggest democracies.

The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain’s capital said Sunday that personnel were being moved out of hotels in Manama after one was hit amid Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone attacks on U.S. and Israeli interests across the Middle East.

“The U.S. Embassy in Bahrain is tracking confirmed reports the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Manama was struck on March 1, 2026, resulting in injuries,” the embassy said in a security alert shared Sunday on social media. “We advise U.S. citizens in Bahrain that hotels might be a target for future attacks, and encourage U.S. citizens to avoid hotels in Manama.”

North Korea condemned on Sunday the ongoing United States and Israeli attack on Iran as an “illegal act of aggression,” claiming it had shown the “gangster-like nature” of Washington.

The military campaigns against Iran by the two states “constitute a thoroughly illegal act of aggression and the most vile form of violation of sovereignty in their nature,” a spokesperson for the North’s foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency said Sunday that the country’s top religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi, had issued a decree, or “fatwa” calling for Muslims to wage “jihad against America and Israel” to avenge the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The main perpetrators of this crime are America and the Zionist regime, and this revenge is a religious duty for all Muslims of the world to eliminate the scourge of these criminals from the world,” Tasnim quoted Shirazi as saying.

The Grand Ayatollah does not hold a leadership position in Iran’s theocratic government, but he is among the most senior Shiite Muslim religious authorities in the world.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday slammed the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in U.S. and Israeli strikes as a “cynical violation” of morality and law.

In a letter to his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, published by the Kremlin, Putin expressed “deepest condolences for the assassination” of Khamenei, saying the killing was “carried out in a cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law.”

Russia and China have continued to support Iran during decades of animosity between Western powers and Tehran, helping keep the Islamic Republic afloat economically — despite Russia’s own economic woes — amid a raft of economic sanctions.

CBS/AFP

Israel’s military said Sunday that it had destroyed roughly half of Iran’s missile stockpiles, adding that the Islamic Republic had been producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles each month.

“During the operation, we destroyed approximately half of the Iranian regime’s missile stockpiles and prevented the production of at least 1,500 additional missiles,” military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin said in a televised statement.

“The regime had recently been producing dozens of surface-to-surface missiles per month and intended to increase production to hundreds per month.”

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah vowed Sunday to retaliate for the U.S. and Israeli war on its key backer, Iran.

“We will undertake our duty of confronting the aggression” of the U.S. and Israel, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem said in a statement, according to the French news agency AFP. Qassem said Hezbollah would not leave “the field of honor and resistance.”

Israel has hammered Hezbollah in Lebanon in recent years, killing multiple leaders of the group and diminishing its significant fire power.

The group has long been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Israel and many other nations.

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