President Donald Trump and his administration painted a picture of a battered and desperate Iranian leadership on Friday, with Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth claiming that new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had been wounded and disfigured by strikes and was hiding underground. Trump himself was more blunt, calling Iranian leaders “deranged scumbags” in a social media post while celebrating their deaths as a great personal honor. The words came as bombs continued to fall on Tehran in waves of US and Israeli airstrikes.
Iran’s new supreme leader rose to prominence after Israel killed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had led the Islamic Republic for 37 years. Mojtaba Khamenei issued a defiant written statement on Thursday calling for unity, but provided no video or audio message, which American officials cited as evidence of his injuries. Iranian state media showed other senior officials including foreign minister Abbas Araghchi walking in Tehran’s streets and participating in demonstrations, chanting slogans against the United States and Israel.
Israel reported striking more than 200 individual targets across Iran within a 24-hour period, hitting missile launchers, air defence systems, and weapons manufacturing sites. US forces simultaneously conducted raids including the devastating strike on Kharg Island, which Trump described as the destruction of every military facility on Iran’s most important oil export hub. Hegseth told reporters that the combined toll since the war began had surpassed 15,000 targets struck.
The cost of the conflict in human lives continued to mount on all sides. Iran reported over 1,300 deaths, Lebanon confirmed more than 600 killed with 800,000 displaced, and Israel reported 12 deaths on its side. Thirteen US service members have died, including six in a tanker aircraft crash in Iraq. A French soldier was also killed by a pro-Iranian militia drone in the same country, highlighting the increasingly international nature of the conflict.
Economically, the world watched anxiously as Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz threatened the flow of energy supplies to global markets. European nations, led reportedly by France, opened quiet negotiations with Tehran to secure safe passage for their ships. Trump threatened severe consequences, including strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure, if the strait was not kept open. Oil prices fluctuated as markets tried to price in a scenario with no clear end in sight.