President Donald Trump reportedly told ABC News on Sunday that “Operation Epic Fury,” the military engagement that eliminated Iranian “supreme leader” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also killed every individual American experts considered a potential successor to Khamenei.
Trump launched Operation Epic Fury on Saturday alongside a parallel kinetic engagement by Israel against targets in Iran. Trump confirmed Khamenei’s death personally on Saturday evening, declaring the 86-year-old tyrant’s removal “not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.”
The president announced America would continue “heavy and pinpoint bombing … uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
It is not entirely clear at press time who is running Iran, as the country’s “president,” Masoud Pezeshkian, is a subordinate of Khamenei’s.
Iranian state media has announced that the “Assembly of Experts,” the panel that chooses the next “supreme leader,” has already convened and is in discussions to appoint a successor. Pezeshkian is on the panel alongside several other leaders in the judiciary and clerical leadership, all stooges chosen under Khamenei’s leadership. Reports speculate that several “hardline” clerics are potentially likely successors, in addition to Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the late dictator.
An infographic titled “Process to determine the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran” created in Istanbul, Turkiye on March 2, 2026. (Photo by Efnan Ipsir/Anadolu via Getty Images)
President Trump told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday night that the United States had a list of preferred successors to Khamenei, but they had also been eliminated in Operation Epic Fury, so the next leader of Iran is likely an unexpected name.
“The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates,” Karl said that the president told him. “It’s not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead.”
Karl later said on an ABC News broadcast that Trump said that someone in what remains of the Iranian government reached out to him, but refused to name them.
“He told me that somebody within the Iranian government has reached out to him,” Karl relayed. “I asked him who it was and he said, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you’ … someone who is no longer reporting to the supreme leader.”
In remarks prior to these, President Trump announced that Operation Epic Fury had resulted in the killing of at least 48 senior Iranian officials including Khamenei.
“It’s moving along. It’s moving along rapidly. This has been this way for 47 years,” he said in remarks to reporters. “It’s moving along rapidly. Nobody can believe the success we’re having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it’s moving along rapidly.”
These remarks aligned with updates from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), which reported on Sunday that “the majority of the highest-ranking senior military officials of the Iranian security leadership have been eliminated by the IDF.”
Operation Epic Fury has resulted in the deaths of four American servicemembers, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which operates in the Middle East, confirmed on Monday. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), both an arm of the Iranian armed forces and a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, is at press time continuing to respond to the joint American-Israeli attack with drone and missile strikes on its neighbors. As of Monday, Iran has bombed at least eight of its neighbors: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Iraq, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Bahrain.
A coalition of Middle Eastern countries targeted by Iran, alongside America, published a statement on Sunday condemning what they called Iran’s “indiscriminate and reckless missile and drone attacks” on its neighbors. The statement – signed by Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – stated that Iran was targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure and its strikes were an illegitimate response to the American and Israeli operations.
An infographic titled “Military assets used by the United States in its strikes on Iran” created in Ankara, Turkiye on March 2, 2026. (Photo by Murat Usubali/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“These unjustified strikes targeted sovereign territory, endangered civilian populations, and damaged civilian infrastructure,” the statement read.
“The Islamic Republic’s actions represent a dangerous escalation that violates the sovereignty of multiple states and threatens regional stability,” it continued. “The targeting of civilians and of countries not engaged in hostilities is reckless and destabilizing behavior.”
On Sunday night, Trump delivered an official update on “Operation Epic Fury” in which he announced that the United States had successfully hit hundreds of Iranian military targets in the country.
“Over the past 36 hours, the United States and its partners have launched Operation Epic Fury, one of the largest, most complex, most overwhelming military offensives the world has ever seen. Nobody’s seen anything like it,” Trump said. “We have hit hundreds of targets in Iran, including Revolutionary Guard facilities, Iranian air defense systems. Just now, it was announced that we knocked out nine ships, plus their naval building, all in a matter of literally minutes.”
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