Iran’s ruling clerics on Sunday appointed Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as the country’s new supreme leader following the death of his father, Ali Khamenei, who was killed in recent United States–Israeli strikes.

The appointment came nine days after the strikes killed the elder Khamenei and plunged the Middle East into a widening conflict.

Iran’s Assembly of Experts convened to select a new leader and announced that Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, had been chosen as the third supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.

“Mojtaba Khamenei is appointed and introduced as the third leader of the sacred system of the Islamic Republic of Iran, based on the decisive vote of the respected representatives of the Assembly of Experts,” the clerical body said in a statement.

It added that the assembly “did not hesitate for a minute” in appointing a new leader, despite what it described as “the brutal aggression of the criminal America and the evil Zionist regime”.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump had earlier dismissed the younger Khamenei as a “lightweight” and said he believed Washington should have a say in the selection of Iran’s leader.

“If he doesn’t get approval from us, he’s not going to last long,” Trump told ABC News before the announcement was made.

However, Tehran’s top diplomat insisted that the decision rested solely with Iran.

Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Foreign Minister Mr. Abbas Araghchi said Iran would “allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs”.

Araghchi also demanded that Trump “apologise to people of the region” for starting the war.

The younger Khamenei is widely regarded as a conservative figure, particularly because of his close ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological arm of Iran’s military.

Israel’s military had earlier warned any successor that “we will not hesitate to target you”.

Overnight, Israeli strikes hit five oil facilities in and around Tehran, killing at least four people and sparking fires that filled the skies with acrid smoke.

Tehran’s governor told the IRNA news agency that fuel distribution in the capital had been “temporarily interrupted”.

A dark haze hung over the city of about 10 million residents, obscuring the sun as the smell of burning fuel lingered in the air.

Authorities warned that the fumes could be toxic and urged residents to remain indoors, although many windows were shattered by the force of the explosions.

“The blaze has been burning for more than 12 hours; the air has become unbreathable. I cannot even go out to do the daily shopping,” a 35-year-old resident of Tehran said in a text message to contacts in Europe.

“At first, I supported this war. After Khamenei’s death, I celebrated with my friends — we drank wine and danced. But since yesterday… people say there is not even any gasoline left at the gas stations.”

As the war entered its ninth day, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had sufficient supplies to continue their drone and missile campaign across the Middle East for up to six months.

Several explosions were heard over Israel’s commercial hub, Tel Aviv, after the Israeli military said it had detected a salvo of missiles launched from Iran.

Israel’s emergency service, Magen David Adom, said six people were wounded in central Israel.

Trump again refused to rule out deploying American ground troops to Iran, but maintained that the war was close to being won despite continued Iranian missile and drone strikes.

A spokesman for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Mr. Ali Mohammad Naini, said the country had so far used only first- and second-generation missiles but would deploy “advanced and less-used long-range missiles” in the coming days.

Saudi Arabia said two people were killed and 12 wounded by a “military projectile” in Al Kharj province. The kingdom had earlier reported intercepting a wave of drones targeting locations including the diplomatic quarter of its capital, Riyadh.

Kuwait also said an attack struck fuel tanks at its international airport, while Bahrain reported damage to a water desalination plant.

Iran’s health ministry said at least 1,200 civilians had been killed and about 10,000 wounded — figures that AFP said it could not independently verify.

In Lebanon, the health minister said at least 394 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes since the country was drawn into the war a week earlier, including 83 children and 42 women.

Two Israeli soldiers have also been killed during fighting in southern Lebanon, the Israeli military said.

Trump, meanwhile, attended the return of the bodies of six American service members killed in a drone strike on a United States base in Kuwait last Sunday.