DUBAI: Iran's president apologised Saturday for attacks on regional countries even as its missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states, indicating that Tehran's political leadership could not exercise full command over Iran's armed forces. He also rejected US President Donald Trump's repeated demands for surrender.
President Masoud Pezeshkian, one member of a tripartite leadership council overseeing Iran since a Feb. 28 airstrike started the war and killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, delivered the defiant message exactly one week into a conflict that has spread across the region, rattled global markets and air travel and left Iran's own leadership greatly weakened by hundreds of Israeli and American airstrikes.
The message, seemingly filmed in a hurry without professional broadcast equipment, again underlined the limited powers being exercised by theocracy's leaders over its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles targeting Israel and others. It answered only to Khamenei and now appears to be picking its own targets as the conflict widens.
While the Iranian president attempted to assuage growing Gulf Arab anger over the attacks, just hours earlier, a wave of missiles and drones had disrupted flights at Dubai International Airport, targeted a major Saudi oil facility and sent people fleeing for cover multiple times in Bahrain.
Pezeshkian also kept up his criticism of Trump's call for Iran to unconditionally surrender to America.
“That's a dream that they should take to their grave,” he said.
Shortly after Pezeshkian's message, Trump warned in a social media post Saturday that more Iranian officials would become targets in the war, writing: “Today Iran will be hit very hard!” In his comments on his Truth Social website, Trump noted the apology by Pezeshkian.
“Under serious consideration for complete destruction and certain death, because of Iran's bad behaviour, are areas and groups of people that were not considered for targeting up until this moment in time,” Trump wrote, without elaborating.
Pezeshkian's statement on Saturday said Iran's three-man leadership council had been in touch with the armed forces over the attacks.
“I should apologise to the neighbouring countries that were attacked by Iran, on my own behalf,” the president said. “From now on, they should not attack neighbouring countries or fire missiles at them, unless we are attacked by those countries. I think we should solve this through diplomacy.”
Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, Iran's armed forces spokesman, then added more confusion by saying after Pezeshkian that Tehran has “not hit countries that did not provide space for America to invade our country.”
The American strikes haven't been coming from the Gulf Arab states, now under attack.
Likely in response to the ongoing political confusion, on Saturday, a prominent cleric in Iran, Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi, urged the country's Assembly of Experts to act quickly to name a new supreme leader. Buildings associated with the 88-cleric panel have been hit by airstrikes in the war, likely slowing any meeting of the group.
“The timely realisation of this important matter will lead to national authority and the best possible organisation of affairs,” Shirazi said in a statement.
There was no foreseeable end to the fighting. Trump's administration approved a new USD 151 million arms sale to Israel after Trump said he would not negotiate with Iran without its “unconditional surrender”, and US officials warned of a forthcoming bombing campaign they said would be the most intense yet in the weeklong conflict.
Iran's UN ambassador said the country would “take all necessary measures” to defend itself.
Associated Press video showed explosions flashing and smoke rising over western Tehran as Israel said it had begun a broad wave of strikes.
The US and Israel have battered Iran with strikes, targeting its military capabilities, leadership and nuclear programme. The stated goals and timelines for the war have repeatedly shifted as the US has at times suggested it seeks to topple Iran's government or elevate new leadership from within.
The fighting has killed at least 1,230 people in Iran, more than 200 in Lebanon and 11 in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Six US troops have been killed.
Also, early Saturday, incoming missiles from Iran had people heading to bomb shelters across Israel, and loud booms sounded in Jerusalem. There were no immediate reports of casualties by Israel's emergency services.
In a sign of the widening nature of the conflict, sirens sounded early Saturday in Bahrain as Iranian attacks targeted the island kingdom. And Saudi Arabia said it destroyed drones headed toward its vast Shaybah oil field and shot down a ballistic missile launched toward Prince Sultan Air Base, which hosts US forces.
In Dubai, several blasts were heard Saturday morning, and the government said it had activated air defences. Passengers waiting for flights at Dubai International Airport found themselves ushered down into train tunnels at the sprawling airfield after the alert sounded.
Later that morning, long-haul carrier Emirates said that ”all flights to and from Dubai have been suspended until further notice." Shortly after, the decision was reversed, and Emirates said the airline would resume operations.
Qatar's energy minister, Saad al-Kaabi, warned in an interview with the Financial Times that the war could “bring down the economies of the world,” predicting a widespread shutdown of Gulf energy exports that could send oil to USD 150 a barrel.
The price for a barrel of benchmark US crude rose above USD 90 on Friday for the first time in more than two years.
Writing for the Qatar-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera, a regional analyst warned Iran was making “a strategic miscalculation of historic proportions.”
Sultan al-Khulaifi, a senior researcher at the Centre for Conflict and Humanitarian Studies, wrote: "By spreading the conflict to the Gulf, Tehran is doing precisely what Israel could not do alone: steering the war away from the Israeli-Iranian axis and transforming it into a confrontation between Iran and its Arab neighbours.”
Al Jazeera, a Pan-Arab satellite news network owned and funded by Qatar's government, has been used in the past to signal Doha's opinions on regional matters.
The Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with an Israeli force that landed late Friday in the mountains of eastern Lebanon.
The Lebanese Health Ministry said Saturday that at least 16 people were killed in subsequent Israeli strikes and another 35 were wounded.
Israel did not acknowledge the fighting, and its military did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Israel has carried out waves of airstrikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, where Hezbollah has a large presence, but which is also home to hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Lebanon's Health Ministry says over 200 people have been killed by Israeli strikes since Monday and over 800 wounded.