India finally condoles Khamenei’s death
WASHINGTON/TEHRAN, March 5: The conflict involving the United States, Israel, and Iran entered its sixth day on Thursday, with tensions escalating inside Iran and across the wider Middle East, including the Gulf, Lebanon, and Iraq.
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Iran has threatened global shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil transit route, raising concerns about wider disruptions to international trade. At the same time, fighting and military operations have spread across multiple fronts in the region. After a US submarine sank the Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean, President Donald Trump, during a meeting at the White House, rated the performance of the US in the US-Israeli war with Iran as a 15 on a scale of 10, and vowed to push on.
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Iran said it had targeted the headquarters of Kurdish opposition forces in Iraq’s Kurdistan region following strikes on Kurdish areas in both Iran and Iraq.
“We targeted the headquarters of Kurdish groups opposed to the revolution in Iraqi Kurdistan with three missiles,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported, quoting a military statement.
However, Kurdish Iranian opposition parties based in northern Iraq have denied reports that their fighters had crossed into Iran. As per media reports, Hanna Hussein Yazdan Pana of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) said, “Not a single Peshmerga fighter has moved.” Peshmerga fighters are seeking international protection to enter Iran.
Regional governments have heightened security as missile and drone attacks continue. Authorities in Abu Dhabi said six foreign nationals were injured by falling debris after air defence systems intercepted drones.
“The incident resulted in minor and moderate injuries to six Pakistani and Nepali nationals,” the Abu Dhabi media office said in a statement.
Moreover, as the area of conflict has been widened, Qatar, Saudi Arabia have been intercepting missile attacks while Bahrain claimed that its air defences had destroyed dozens of Iranian weapons.
In a statement posted on Instagram, the Bahrain Defence Force said it had intercepted 75 Iranian missiles and 123 drones since Tehran began targeting the country over the weekend. The use of missiles and drones against civilian targets is a flagrant violation of international humanitarian law and threatens regional peace and security.”
As the US State Department urged Americans in the Gulf region to leave immediately, several American universities with campuses in the Middle East announced changes to their operations.
Universities in Qatar’s Education City and in the United Arab Emirates have moved classes online or facilitated departures for students seeking to leave.
Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog praised US President Donald Trump for his decision to strike Iran. “It’s a uniquely bold decision,” Herzog said in an interview with CBS. However, he claimed that Israel had not pushed the United States into the conflict.
“We do not dictate anything to President Trump, and we did not drag America into a war,” Herzog said, describing coordination between the two countries as “superbly close.”
“It’s a unique war a focused war that comes at a time when you can really bring real change to the Middle East for the future,” he said.
As Israel has been continuing its strikes on military infrastructure linked to Iran in Tehran, the IDF has consistently targeted Hezbollah infrastructure in Beirut, thus dragging Lebanon into the wider conflict.
In response, Iran launched several waves of missiles toward Israel overnight, prompting sirens in Jerusalem and other central Israeli areas.
The White House said Washington’s objectives include dismantling Iran’s ballistic missile programme and preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
“The goal is to destroy the regime’s ballistic missile programme, annihilate Iran’s naval presence in the region and dismantle its terrorist proxies,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
With missile exchanges continuing and tensions rising across multiple countries, regional leaders have warned that the conflict risks widening into a broader Middle East war.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump has told Axios that he should be involved in picking Iran’s next supreme leader.
He said Mojtaba Khamenei, the son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a frontrunner to succeed his father, would be an “unacceptable” choice.
Meanwhile, India on Thursday condoled the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei against the backdrop of scathing criticism of the government by opposition parties for its silence on the assassination as well as on sinking of an Iranian ship by the US off the Sri Lankan coast.
Six days after Khamenei was killed in a joint strike on Tehran by the US and Israel, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited the Iranian embassy and signed the condolence book on behalf of the government of India. Misri also held a brief conversation with Iranian envoy Mohammad Fathali.
Separately, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar spoke to his Iranian counterpart Seyed Abbas Araghchi and discussed the evolving situation in West Asia. It was the second phone conversation between the two foreign ministers since February 28 when the US and Israel launched the attack on Iran.
“Sincerest condolences on behalf of the government and people of India. We pray for peace for the departed soul,” Misri wrote in the condolence book on Khamenei’s death, in what is being seen by many as a signs of a subtle shift in New Delhi’s position on the conflict.
Unlike in May 2024, when Jaishankar visited the Iranian embassy to mourn the death of the then president Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash, New Delhi’s response to the Supreme Leader’s death was handled by the foreign secretary. (Agencies)
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