SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Days after Israeli airstrikes killed Iran's supreme leader, the country says another attack targeted the building where top Iranian clerics would meet to choose his successor. Israel's prime minister says the goal of this war is to get rid of the Shia theocracy that has ruled Iran for almost half a century. As for the U.S.'s reasons for going to the war, the Trump administration continues to provide conflicting justifications. Here to discuss the widening war across the Middle East, we've got NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai and NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez here in Washington. Aya, I'm going to start with you. What is the latest on this Israeli strike in Iran today?
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Sure. So Israel's military says it's targeted the building housing the Assembly of Experts. Now, that's the body of top Shia clerics whose job it is to choose a new supreme leader, but it's unclear if the assembly was actually meeting at the time. I don't think that they were. But as you said, it came right after Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the aim was to end the theocratic regime there.
Now, meanwhile, also today, thousands of people in Iran gathered for the funeral of an elementary school that was struck in which over 160 students - most of them young girls - were killed, according to Iran, as well as 14 teachers. Now, Iran's state TV had aerial footage of the huge gathering of mourners in the southern city of Minab where the school was. That is the deadliest strike so far of this entire war. Now, Israel denies it hit the school. The U.S. military says it's looking into it. Iran says the school was hit Saturday morning just at the start of these attacks.
And also, you know, with top leadership in Iran taken out in these strikes, what we know from Iran is that a three-man council is currently leading the country, and it's comprised of Iran's elected president and two top clerics.
DETROW: OK. So Franco, now to you. We talked yesterday about how the justification for this war has shifted several times from the Trump administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said yesterday, the U.S. followed Israel into the war. President Trump pushed back on that. What did he say?
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Yeah. It was actually the first time, Scott, that Trump answered questions on camera from the press since striking Iran. And that question about Israel leading the U.S. into war was the first one posed to him. And Trump forcefully rejected the idea, saying it was him who pushed Israel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I think they were going to attack first, and I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.
ORDOÑEZ: Now, that, of course, is very different than what Rubio said yesterday. He told reporters that the U.S. faced an imminent threat because Israel was about to attack Iran and that Iran would have retaliated against U.S. forces in the region. I mean, those kind of comments led to a lot of criticism, particularly from the right, that Israel was bossing Trump around and leading the U.S. into war. And it just appears that the White House is trying to get back control the narrative.
DETROW: But this idea that Iran was going to attack first, it's worth flagging, this is yet another new justification for the war, right?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. It is. And I think that's part of the problem because the White House just has all these confusing, mixed messages. I mean, Trump also pointed to the number of protesters being killed as rationale for going to war. He's also talked about the ballistic missile program and the threat against U.S. troops and allies in the region. And today, he said, if they didn't do what they're doing, right now, Iran would have started a nuclear war. Of course, as we reported many times, this is the same program - nuclear program that Trump said was obliterated a few months ago.
DETROW: Right. Right. Aya, what can you tell us about the situation in Israel, as well as the Gulf today - how Iran is trying to broaden this war?
BATRAWY: Well, we did see actually less strikes than we have since Saturday, and the indications of that are the airspace has slowly started to open up again in the UAE as well as in Israel, and flights are slowly starting to resume again from these two countries. But we did see the U.S. embassies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait hit in the past 24 hours, and a drone also sparked a fire at the U.S. consulate in Dubai tonight. We are also seeing several U.S. embassies in the region just shutting down and the State Department advising U.S. citizens to leave more than a dozen countries in the Middle East.
Now, Iran says its target is U.S. assets and bases in the region where soldiers are. But, you know, its attacks have hit vital infrastructure and civilian infrastructure across the Gulf, including Qatari gas installations, and that shut down that country's gas production entirely, and you saw gas prices soar by 35% in Europe. Also, the Strait of Hormuz is still effectively shut down. That's where all of the Gulf's oil passes through to the rest of the world. And that has been shut down, and ships aren't moving in and out of that at all.
DETROW: OK. Franco, I want to go back to you about what else President Trump is saying here. Did he give any more indication about what comes next or what America would like to see when it comes to who leads Iran next?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah. When asked by reporters who he'd like to take over, he said most of the people that they had in mind were dead. I mean, Trump actually made kind of a comparison with Iran and Venezuela - that operation where the - swooped in and captured president Nicolás Maduro. He noted how they kept the government pretty much intact in order to main control and kind of prevent the kind of chaos created by the power vacuum during the Iraq War. But again, he said most leaders are dead. He said, even their backup options may be dead. And he acknowledged some of the concerns may be that even a more dangerous person than the supreme leader could come to power, calling that a worst-case scenario.
DETROW: All right. So lastly, Aya, given all of that, what are the concerns about what's next in the region?
BATRAWY: Well, you know, you're seeing Hezbollah and Israel trade fire. That, you know, hasn't happened for 15 months, and a ceasefire was mostly Israel just pounding southern Lebanon from time to time. But one attack mostly overlooked was a water tank belonging to a power plant was struck yesterday in Qatar, and that really is the Gulf's biggest fear - that attacks on power plants or water desalination could paralyze countries here. You know, these are desert cities that would be paralyzed by that. But, you know, the bigger question is how much longer are Gulf Arab countries going to sit and take these hits from Iran before their own war planes are flying over Iran, or they start launching missiles back? And that would turn this into a much larger, destabilizing region-wide war.
DETROW: That is NPR's Aya Batrawy in Dubai and NPR's White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez here in Washington. Thank you so much to both of you.
ORDOÑEZ: Thank you.
BATRAWY: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
