Name: Israel bombs compound of group that picks Iran’s new leader
Uploaded: 2026-03-03T21:38:09.000Z
Duration: 11 min 1 s
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Right now in the Middle east, the bombing is intensifying with Israel hitting the compound of the group responsible for choosing Iran's next supreme leader.

Basic passive voice

The strike reportedly obliterated a compound where an Iranian council was supposed to elect the new ayatollah.

Now Iran's state media is reporting that it was evacuated before the attack.

And President Trump is saying that it's now even more unclear who might next lead that nation.

You have someone in mind right now because you said all the people you did have in mind have been taken out.

Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead.

So, you know, we had some in mind from that group that is dead.

They may be dead also Based on reports, CNN's Nick Payton Walsh joins us live now from northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shimona.

So, Nick, just in terms of the compound where some several Iranian officials have gathered to choose the next supreme leader.

Just walk us through what we know in terms of that compound being targeted.

The images are publicly available of significant damage to this compound in the city of Qom where the assembly of Experts, according to Israeli Source gathered, that's 88 senior clerics to essentially choose the new supreme leader.

Iranian state media though, is saying that the building was evacuated prior to the strike, essentially saying that the bid by the Israelis here to kill the committee that would anoint the Alatoya successor was unsuccessful.

We don't know the truth of the matter here.

And it's important to point out that earlier on when we were seeing significant casualties amongst Iran's leadership, we were getting signals from Iranian state media that many of them were actually okay.

So it's important here to try and assess the exact truth of all of this.

Frankly, if indeed 88 senior clerics check charged with this extraordinary task would in 2026 think they could only do it after the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei in a large group meeting of leadership decide that they needed to replicate that kind of setting in order to choose a success.

I should point out too that a similar facility of the assembly of Experts was targeted in Tehran in the recent days as well.

So a pattern here potentially of the Israelis trying to disrupt the succession process.

Now I should point out how incredibly complicated this particular leadership vacuum makes things in terms of de escalating this war, looking for negotiation.

It's clear from some senior Iranian officials, the foreign minister indeed that the military now in Iran is acting with some degree of autonomy even with previously issued instructions.

So it's not entirely clear if day by day their tasks are being adapted to the particular moment.

And if you're also trying to perhaps look for an off ramp, some kind of negotiation here, if there's nobody in a society as autocratic as Iran actually specifically calling the shots, remember, they've been dependent on the word of the Ayatollah Khomeini for nigh on 40 years now to tell them precisely what path should be chosen, particularly in a moment as key as this.

That is a very perilous moment of vacuum.

Essentially, you can understand why Israel that's keen to see regime change and as much damage as possible can be done to Iran's autocracy will continue to persist with that leadership interruption.

if you are in the White House now and looking for some moment perhaps where you could seek an off ramp, it's going to be exceptionally hard to do that with what we're seeing now in terms of strikes against the body to choose the Ayatollah's successor, Israel has bombed the compound of the group that chooses the new supreme leader.

I'm being told that I've got a guest standing by for me.

Michael Knights is head of research with Horizon Engage.

He specializes in the military and security affairs of Iraq, Iran and the Gulf states.

I'm going to get you because that is our latest, very latest news in Tucson and just get you to respond to what you've just heard me report there.

It's really nice to hear your London accent, Becky.

So thank you very much for staying at the post during this hitting of the assembly of Experts building without actually killing large numbers of those officials, if that's what's happened, and

it seems to be the case indicates that the Israelis probably did what they call a roof knock on the location before they struck it, which means they were trying to disrupt the process of electing a new speaker or appointing a new supreme leader and warning those involved to stay dispersed, but

without trying to actually kill a large number of the most senior clerics in in Iran at the same time.

How much longer can Tehran realistically sustain this pace of attacks without depleting key capabilities or risk a far more punishing response?

Donald Trump told my colleague, CNN's Jake Tapper yesterday that we are yet to see the big wave as he described it.

I think both sides have still got some escalation options in reserve.

The Iranians have not at this point hit upstream energy in the Gulf desalination leadership and they stayed away from some other civilian targets.

Right now, the US has not gone for providing very strong support to Iranian opposition elements within the country.

And they still have some, some options in terms of further escalation against regime security targets.

So right now we're at the point where the Iranians basically can survive.

The Iranian regime could survive at this point.

It can probably hang on for a couple of more weeks.

The question is whether anybody's going to try a lot harder to give it a push over the edge.

The US within the next week or two might decide that just disarming the regime is good enough.

I'm in the Gulf region, so I do want to keep this front and center in our reporting because it's important.

We have seen this escalate beyond Israel, of course, and

out to the Gulf region and to non military installations.

We're talking about, you know, oil installations, energy installations, you know, the economy, hotels, etc.

Gulf states have been intercepting Iranian drones and missiles now for days.

Those that have made it through, you know, are clearly targeting these non military installations as well.

But most of those missiles and drones have been intercepted.

The UAE saying in a briefing today that they have more than enough ammunition to, to sustainably intercept all types of weapons for, and

And their air defense systems are in good shape.

I wonder whether you believe that is the story across the Gulf and just what sort of response we might expect from this region given, you know, that these are not, not retaliatory attacks at this point.

These are illegal attacks on an entire region by Iran.

The Gulf states very clearly signaled that they were not going to be active participants in this offensive by the US and Israel, and

And not just individual points of US military presence that have been largely evacuated, but

also these economic and sensitive targets.

You can see the Iranians have tried to hit these targets a lot harder and the Gulf missile defenses and anti drone defenses have been really excellent.

One reason for that is because they learned a lot from the Yemen war between 2015 and 2019 about how to intercept these kind of drone attacks en masse.

So, you know, they have blunted the offensive and what's instead happening is we're seeing individual touch points where individual drones or missiles are getting through and they're signaling what would have been a far larger strike by the Iranians.

I think, personally, we saw the Iranian foreign minister saying this essentially on Sunday.

The Iranian military is working its way down a preset target list to be executed in the event of the death of the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.

And they're still working their way through that.

The civilian military, the civilian leadership in Iran is seemingly trying to gain back some control over the targeting process.

We're actually looking at images of something that happened this morning in Comms Iran where by the sort of assembly, the assembly of experts, the 88 member assembly of experts that usually gather to choose a supreme leader, that particular compound apparently where they had gathered to choose the next Ayatollah, the next supreme leader was, was bombed.

So it, if there is no diplomatic off ramp at this point, Elie, if it is virtually impossible to sort of unify and arm the opposition, not that that is a good idea to begin with, but

if that is a very difficult, if that is a very difficult endeavor, what is the solution and how does this end long term?

Ellie so look, I think in reality both Iran and President Trump have buckled up for a weeks long military conflict against one another.

We are also seeing indications from inside Tehran that they are also not prepared for ceasefire negotiations at this stage because going back to the reasoning I said that they are trying to create a deterrence equation that prevents the US and Israel from restarting another war that could again ignite such a regional ripple effect through the Middle east and elsewhere.

And so I think they are both in this game of upping the ante militarily for some time.

And in this in between phase, I think there needs to be some responsible actors, mediators perhaps.

Here we're seeing an increased role for Turkey as some European governments are also standing up to say that there needs to be a de escalation track.

So someone needs to step in to shepherd what a negotiated settlement would look like.

That essentially allows this phase of the conflict between the US and Iran on the military front to end and for them to go back to the negotiating table.

Unfortunately, however, once you start a war, the events that come after that are not always predictable.

The US has had a series of wars that end up going wrong, particularly in this part of the world.

And so I think some cool heads need to intervene now to try and push both Tehran and Trump to de escalate these wartime conditions.