DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s president apologized 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 U.S. 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 the 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.
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.
