US President Donald Trump has said the United States and Israel are in a strong position in their war on Iran, vowing that they would "continue forward" against the country.
Mr Trump rated the US performance in the war with Iran as a 15 on a scale of 10, adding the Islamic republic's leaders were rapidly being killed.
His comments came as the conflict expanded on its fifth day, with a US submarine sinking an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka and fresh blasts across the Middle East.
"We're doing well on the war front, to put it mildly. Somebody said 'on a scale of 10, where would you rate it?' I said about a 15.
"We're in a very strong position now, and their leadership is just rapidly going. Everybody that seems to want to be a leader, they end up dead," Mr Trump told a gathering of tech bosses at the White House.
He added that Iran's arsenal of ballistic missiles was being "wiped out rapidly".
Mr Trump repeated his justifications for attacking Iran, claiming Tehran was on its way to obtaining a nuclear weapon.
"When crazy people have nuclear weapons, bad things happen," Mr Trump claimed.
The US leader pledged that he would "continue forward" with the joint air campaign with Israel that has seen Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei assassinated on its opening day on Saturday.
The Trump administration has faced criticism after days of mixed messages about the rationale for the war, given Mr Trump’s previous campaign boasts about starting "no new wars".
'Paying in blood'
He has yet to spell out his plan for what happens after the war or to say whether he wants a wholesale change in Iran's government, or to work with remnants who would deal with Washington.
Mr Trump has pursued a policy of working with figures from the Venezuelan government following the US toppling of Nicolas Maduro in January - and making a deal to extract Venezuelan oil.
The White House said that Iran's clerical government was being "absolutely crushed" and was "paying in blood" - but declined to confirm if Mr Trump wanted regime change in Iran.
However, Mr Trump is "actively considering" a US role in Iran after the US-Israeli war on the country concludes, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
"I think it's something the president is actively considering and discussing with his advisors and his national security team," Ms Leavitt told a briefing.
She also rejected as "false" reports that Mr Trump had agreed to arm Kurdish separatist militia in Iran so that they could rise up against the government.
However, she confirmed that Mr Trump had spoken to Kurdish leaders.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Mr Trump was considering supporting Kurdish groups.
At least 87 killed after US sinks Iranian warship
A US submarine has sunk an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, killing at least 87 sailors and leaving dozens missing, officials have said.
"An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo," US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters.
He called the attack "quiet death" and the first US sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.
"Like in that war," Mr Hegseth said, "we are fighting to win".
The Sri Lankan navy recovered the bodies of 87 sailors from waters near the southern city of Galle, but 61 remained missing, police and defence officials said.
US Department of Defense video purports to show the sinking of an Iranian warship
This afternoon, the US Department of Defense released footage it claimed showed the destruction of an Iranian warship.
Khamenei's son Mojtaba is alive and favoured to succeed him
Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei, the powerful son of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, is alive and favoured to emerge as his father's successor, two Iranian sources said.
The body had been expected to lie in state in a vast Tehran mosque from this evening, but state media reported a farewell ceremony had been postponed.
The two Iranian sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the younger Khamenei was not in Tehran during the strike that destroyed the leader's compound and also killed the elder Khamenei's wife, another son and a number of senior military and leadership figures.
Iran said the Assembly of Experts that will select the new leader will announce its decision soon, only the second time it has done so since the Islamic Republic's founding in 1979.
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Flight from Dubai to Dublin a 'positive development'
Oil prices rise 1% as Iran crisis disrupts Middle East supply
Israel said it would hunt down whoever was chosen as its forces continued to hit targets across Iran for a fifth day.
An Israeli F-35 fighter jet shot down an Iranian Yak-130 over Tehran, believed to be the first time the new generation F-35 has downed a manned aircraft in combat.
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United Nations panel 'deeply disturbed' by death of Iranian schoolgirls
A United Nations panel of experts said it was "deeply disturbed" by the deaths of children in the bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls' school in Minab in southern Iran, which occurred at the beginning of the war on Saturday.
"The committee is alarmed by reports of strikes on civilian infrastructure, including schools and hospitals, which have injured and traumatised children, and claimed many young lives," the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said.
Children must be protected from war, the committee added.
Iran has blamed Israel and the United States for the strike on the school in the Iranian city of Minab on the first day of the war on Saturday, giving a toll of more than 160 dead.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed on Monday that US forces "would not deliberately target a school", while Israel has also claimed it is investigating the incident.
Iranian state media has said deaths from US-Israeli attacks had reached 1,045, including 165 girls killed in the attack on the school in Minab, the highest toll among several civilian sites reported to have been hit.
Meanwhile, Iran's Revolutionary Guards said it has total control of the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway for global energy transit.
With energy prices already spiking, Mr Trump had said the US navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the crucial Gulf shipping route.
Israel orders people in southern Lebanon to evacuate
Separately, the Israeli military has ordered the residents of southern Lebanon to move to north of the Litaani River.
"Residents of southern Lebanon - you must move immediately to areas north of the Litani River," one of the military's Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee posted on X.
Lebanese state media also reported that the Israeli army had entered the southern Lebanese town of Khiam, about 6km from the border, marking its deepest entry since the fighting broke out.
The report comes a day after Israel's military said it was creating a buffer zone inside Lebanon to protect Israeli residents.
An Israeli strike on a four-storey residential building this morning killed at least four people and wounded six others in the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek with rescue teams working to pull families from beneath the rubble, state news agency NNA said.
The Lebanese health ministry said 72 people have been killed in Israeli attacks since Monday while authorities in Lebanon said more than 83,000 thousand people have been displaced.
Watch: Explosions rock southern Beirut; planes take off from nearby airport
