Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Defense announced on Wednesday that its forces successfully intercepted and destroyed three cruise missiles outside Al-Kharj city, southeast of the capital.
The announcement marks the third wave of aerial attacks repelled in the same area on the same day. Earlier in the day, Saudi defenses downed nine drones and two cruise missiles. No casualties or damage were reported in any of the incidents.
The UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran on Wednesday condemned Israeli and US airstrikes on the country and urged an immediate halt to the conflict.
“These attacks, which were followed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes across the region, run counter to the UN Charter, which prohibits the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State,” the mission said in a statement.
The mission warned that all parties must comply with international humanitarian law and protect civilians, adding that violations could lead to accountability for war crimes and serious human rights abuses.
The mission also expressed alarm over Iran’s retaliatory attacks on neighbouring countries and raised concerns about the safety of detainees in Iran, including people arrested during nationwide protests that began on Dec. 28, 2025.
The White House says Iran rejected a US proposal to establish a joint civilian nuclear program with American investment in exchange for dismantling its uranium enrichment infrastructure before Washington and Israel launched strikes on the country.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the offer was part of what she described as “good faith negotiations” conducted by President Donald Trump’s envoys in the weeks leading up to the attacks.
According to Leavitt, US negotiators offered to lift sanctions on Iran, supply nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes and support a joint civil nuclear program backed by American investment.
In return, Iran would have been required to permanently dismantle its enrichment facilities.
“They refused to say yes to peace,” Leavitt said. “And now they are reaping the consequences of that.”
The proposals emerged from three rounds of talks mediated by Oman before the strikes began. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in discussions aimed at defusing tensions over Tehran’s nuclear program.
Oman’s foreign minister later said the US attacks came at a time when Tehran had already signaled readiness for unprecedented concessions related to its nuclear activities, raising questions about Washington’s characterization of the negotiations.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful and insists it will not give up what it describes as its sovereign right to enrich uranium.
Iranian officials say enrichment for civilian purposes, including nuclear energy and medical uses, is permitted under international agreements, though they have expressed willingness in the past to accept limits and monitoring.
US President Donald Trump also suggested the conflict could further reshape Iran’s leadership.
“Their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead,” Trump said on Wednesday, adding that the United States was in a “very strong position” in the conflict and rating the country’s military strength “about a 15” on a scale of 10.
The dispute over enrichment has remained the central obstacle in nuclear diplomacy between Tehran and Washington.
With negotiations now overtaken by military escalation, the collapse of the talks has pushed the long-running nuclear dispute into open conflict and raised fears the confrontation could widen across the region.
US President Donald Trump hinted that Ali Khamenei’s potential successors will be killed as the conflict with Iran escalates.
“Their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead,” Trump said on Wednesday.
Trump said the United States was in a “very strong position” in the conflict and praised the country’s military strength. “Somebody said on a scale of 10, where would you rate it? I said about a 15,” he said.
“We have the greatest military in the world by far,” Trump added. “So we’re in a very strong position now.”
For decades, the wife of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei lived almost entirely outside public view. Even her death was reported reluctantly, as though she had never been there at all.
Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh died one day after her husband. She spent her final day in a coma at a hospital near their residence on Pasteur Avenue in central Tehran, a compound long guarded by the Revolutionary Guards but now destroyed.
Born into a religious family in Mashhad, she married Khamenei in 1964 in a traditional family-arranged ceremony. T
he couple had six children: four sons born before the 1979 Revolution and two daughters born afterward. One daughter, Hoda, was killed in the same attack that targeted Khamenei’s home and office.
A Life Lived in the Shadows
Throughout her life, Mansoureh remained one of the most private figures in Iran’s ruling elite. Her public presence was far more limited than that of Fakhr Iran Saghafi, the wife of Ruhollah Khomeini, or Effat Marashi, the wife of the late Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.
So little was publicly known about her that when news of her death spread, Iranian media initially struggled to locate a reliable photograph. Some outlets mistakenly published a picture of Ategheh Rajai, the outspoken wife of another late president, Mohammad-Ali Rajai.
Her public voice survives almost entirely through two interviews: one with Mahjoubah magazine in the early 1990s and another with Jomhouri Eslami in 1983, shortly after Khamenei survived an assassination attempt. Most quotations attributed to her in later years originate from these two sources.
“It was not a romantic thing,” she said of their union. “His grandmother came to our house to propose.”
She portrayed her main role as maintaining a stable home life while her husband pursued political and religious work, stressing that she considered full hijab the appropriate attire outside the home, while dress inside could be more flexible but still follow Islamic principles.
Why she remained invisible
Her absence from public life reflected not only personal preference but also the political culture surrounding Iran’s leadership.
Khamenei largely kept his family out of public view for a mixture of religious, cultural, and security reasons. A deeply traditional cleric, he rarely allowed his wife or daughters to appear publicly, and even his sons were long shielded from public scrutiny.
Although she was never formally described as Iran’s “First Lady,” the symbolic status of the Supreme Leader’s spouse occasionally surfaced in public debate.
When Jamileh Alamolhoda, the wife of the late president Ebrahim Raisi, briefly used the title in a television interview, Iranian media reported that the description was later clarified after criticism from conservative circles that the title belonged to the Supreme Leader’s household.
She will be buried beside her husband at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, according to state media reports.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said lawmakers are headed toward a vote on President Donald Trump’s decision to enter the war against Iran, warning that every senator will have to take a clear position.
“Today every senator–every single one–will pick a side,” Schumer said in a floor speech. “Do you stand with the American people who are exhausted with forever wars in the Middle East, or stand with Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth as they bumble us headfirst into another war?”
The vote will be on a war powers resolution that would require congressional approval before any further US attacks on Iran.
The measure, and a similar bill expected in the House later this week, faces long odds in the Republican-controlled Congress and would likely be vetoed by Trump even if it passed.
