Tehran wants the US to “pay” for its attacks “directly”—Iranian official

How the US carried out its attack on Iranian nuclear sites in the Operation Midnight Hammer

* The strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday sparked a wave of anti-US sentiment in Iran, with many calling for retaliation

* A large anti-US and anti-Israel protest took place in Tehran on Sunday evening, with many in the crowd demanding revenge

By Fred Pleitgen, Tamar Michaelis, Nadeen Ebrahim & Anna Cooban, CNN

The Iranian government wants the United States to “directly pay for the war, rather than standing behind Israel and pursue its project without having to pay the cost,” a senior Iranian official told CNN today.

The decision by US President Donald Trump to order strikes against three Iranian nuclear sites on Sunday sparked a wave of anti-US sentiment in Iran, with many calling for retaliation.

A large anti-US and anti-Israel protest took place in Tehran on Sunday evening, with many in the crowd demanding revenge. Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran 11 days ago and the two countries have been striking each other daily since, leaving hundreds of people dead.

“Morale is high and the immense demand by the Iranian people to strike Israel is unprecedented,” the official told CNN, adding that calls by the Iranian public to strike Israel are “an element in intensifying Iran’s battle plans.”

The official told CNN that Iran believed that calls for a temporary pause to the war were a “deception in order to assess Iran’s preparedness for continuing the war.”

They added that Iran estimated the war could last up to two years and that Iran was prepared for that.

The US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities involved more than 125 aircraft, according to US officials. B-2 stealth bombers dropped more than a dozen massive “bunker buster” bombs on Iran’s Fordow and Natanz facilities, while Tomahawk missiles struck a site in the city of Isfahan.

President Donald Trump has hinted at “regime change” in Iran, but the prospect may not be as simple as he thinks, and its outcomes seem unlikely to be what Washington envisions.

Experts warn that regime change in Iran won’t guarantee a government that is friendly to the United States or Israel, and it could possibly pave the way for more hawkish figures who could race to a nuclear bomb as the ultimate deterrent following the destruction wrought by American and Israeli strikes.

While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can be replaced if he is killed, regime failure is also a risk that officials in Washington need to factor in, experts said, which could splinter the country and send shockwaves across the Middle East.

Another outcome could be that elements in the Iranian military assume power. Those factions are “not going to be the type of regime that the US may have had in mind,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, told CNN.

Home to long-simmering separatist movements that have vied for power and independence, Iran could face internal fragmentation and chaos if its government falls entirely, experts warn.

“Regime collapse is just to collapse the state, and let the chaos that ensues fester,” Parsi told CNN.

The supreme leader is elected by the 88-member Assembly of Experts for life and doesn’t officially name a successor.

However, The New York Times reported on Saturday that Khamenei has named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, citing three Iranian officials familiar with the matter.

Any replacement process may take place as separatist groups who have long resented the Islamic Republic seek to take advantage of what they may see as an opportunity.

Meanwhile, according to a source familiar with the matter, Israel can achieve the majority of the goals of its operation in Iran “within days”, adding that first Israel is “working to finish its targets and then operating to promote negotiations”.

Earlier today, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has been involved in the highest-level discussions about the operation, said Israel is “very close to completing” its three main objectives against Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missiles and its regional proxies.

“We’re very close to completing this achievement,” Smotrich told Israel’s Army Radio and in a pre-recorded news conference on Sunday night, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he did not want this to be a military campaign that dragged out over months.

“We will not be dragged into a war of attrition,” he said. “But we also will end this operation — this historic campaign — before we achieve all of our goals.”

Israel’s stock market surged to all-time highs Sunday — after the United States attacked three of Iran’s nuclear facilities.

It’s the sort of immense turbulence that would usually send investors toward the exit, but the US involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict has raised hopes that Tehran now poses a diminished nuclear threat to Israel, according to an investor who spoke to CNN.

“Israeli investors are celebrating the fact that (an) existential threat that had been hanging over the country for decades appears to have been lifted,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Cresset Capital, a Chicago-based investment advisory firm.

On Sunday, Israel’s benchmark Tel Aviv 125 index rose 1.8% to close at a record high. The index comprises the 125 most valuable companies listed on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and is viewed as a barometer for Israel’s economy.

Likewise, the narrower Tel Aviv 35 index — which tracks the 35 most valuable Israeli companies — jumped 1.5% to close at an all-time high.

Intelligence analysts are still working to determine to what extent the US strikes have hindered Tehran’s ability to build a nuclear weapon if it chooses to. Trump said the US assault had “totally obliterated” the three sites, but — according to sources who spoke to CNN — the scale of the damage is not yet clear.

Tehran may also now be spurred to build a rudimentary weapon from any enriched nuclear material it may have salvaged from the sites.

Back in Israel, the TA-125 and TA-35 stock indexes were trading 1% and 0.8% down respectively by mid-afternoon local time Monday.—Edited by Maravi Express