WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared he would be “personally involved” in selecting Iran’s next leader as U.S. and Israeli forces continued their bombardment of its government Thursday, even as officials in Tehran insisted they could withstand the ongoing war.

In a series of media interviews, Trump rejected the potential rise of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of assassinated supreme leader Ali Khamenei, calling him a “lightweight,” and likened his intended role in Iran’s transition to the U.S.-backed installation of Delcy Rodríguez in Venezuela. He said at a White House event that the United States will ensure that “whoever leads the country next will not threaten America.”

The statements came after reports that the Pentagon is preparing for a longer conflict than initially projected by the Trump administration. The deepening crisis sent oil prices soaring Thursday past $80 a barrel and caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to tumble nearly 800 points.

“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at a news conference at U.S. Central Command in Florida. “We have only just begun to fight and fight decisively. … If you think you’ve seen something — just wait.”

On its sixth day, the conflict continued to draw more nations into the fray, as Israel intensified strikes in Lebanon against Hezbollah militants, while Kurdish forces prepared for a potential incursion into northern Iran and European allies pledged warships and access to military bases for the U.S. campaign.

Iran continued retaliatory missile and drone attacks against Israel and U.S. military sites across the region. The strikes hit at least “10 countries that did not attack (Iran),” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said at a news conference Thursday.

Starmer announced new military deployments and confirmed the United Kingdom will allow American forces to use British bases for defensive operations against Iran. The move was a reversal of Starmer’s initial cautious approach, which drew criticism from President Trump, who said, “He’s no Winston Churchill.”

“I took the decision that the U.K. would not join the initial strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel,” Starmer said. “That decision was deliberate. It was in the national interest. And I stand by it. But when Iran started attacking countries around the Gulf and the wider region, the situation changed.”

The United Kingdom will send four additional RAF Typhoon jets to reinforce its squadron in Qatar, deploy Wildcat helicopters with anti-drone capabilities to Cyprus and dispatch the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean.

The moves place Britain among the most active European partners supporting the U.S. war effort, as Starmer warned that the conflict will likely “continue for some time,” he said. It comes after an Iranian drone struck a British military base on Cyprus Monday, which has led to a mounting of European naval resources.

Located just 150 miles from Israel in the eastern Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus has emerged as a strategic — and exposed — nerve center in the U.S. offensive against Iran. It hosts vital British military bases and acts as an intelligence, surveillance, and logistics hub in countering Iranian influence and proxy attacks.

On Thursday, Italy’s defense minister, Guido Crosetto, said that his country would follow the lead of France, Spain and the Netherlands to aid in the defense of Cyprus.

“Within the EU it made sense to send a message of support to Cyprus,” he said.

Spain announced Thursday it would dispatch its advanced frigate Cristóbal Colón to Cyprus, after initially maintaining a “no to war” stance.

France also authorized temporary access to U.S. aircraft on bases located on French soil, a French army general staff official told Reuters.

“The amount of firepower over Iran and over Tehran is about to surge dramatically, and part of it is that we are going to have even more basing. And its not just the U.K, we’ve had other friends step up,” Hegseth said.

Meanwhile, the conflict has reached a fever pitch between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based Iranian proxy and key pillar of what Iran has called the “Axis of Resistance.” Overnight, Israel launched heavy airstrikes across southern Lebanon and issued urgent evacuation warnings for the southern suburbs of the capital, Beirut.

The outbreak of hostilities in Lebanon marks the end of a Israeli-Hezbollah truce and the opening of a major second front in the war with Iran. The fighting erupted after Hezbollah launched a barrage of drones and rockets at Israeli military sites — a retaliation for the joint U.S.-Israeli assassination of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Lebanon’s health ministry reported that at least 102 people have been killed by the Israeli strikes. In the Beirut suburbs, the Israeli military ordered residents of the Hezbollah-dominated Dahieh district to “save your lives and evacuate your homes immediately.”

“Dahieh? There’s not going to be a Dahieh any more,” one young man said as he talked to a family member on the phone at a media vantage point in the nearby hills.

The widening conflict has also drawn in Ukraine, which has some of the world’s most extensive experience in defending against Iranian-made Shahed drones. Such drones have been deployed by Russia in its war on Ukraine.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the United States and other allies in Europe and the Middle East have sought Kyiv’s “expertise and practical support” to help them stop Iranian drones.

“Of course, any assistance we provide is only on the condition that it does not weaken our own defense in Ukraine and that it serves as an investment in our diplomatic capabilities,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post.“We help protect against war those who help us — Ukraine — bring the war to a dignified conclusion.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov declared Thursday that Russia will “do everything in its power to create conditions to make U.S.-Israeli strikes in Iran impossible.” The statement followed a series of phone calls between Lavrov and his Iranian counterpart, Abbas Araghchi. The two allies agreed to a cooperation pact in January 2025.

While the aerial and naval battle intensifies across the Middle East, a ground war may also be on the horizon.

The United States and Israel have increased coordination with Kurdish armed groups along Iran’s border with Iraq, according to the Associated Press. The conflict threatens to stoke long-standing tensions between Tehran and Kurdish groups opposed to the Iranian government.

Iranian forces have already launched missile and drone strikes against Kurdish-controlled areas in northern Iraq following the initial U.S.–Israeli assault on Iranian targets.

Those strikes targeted areas around the city of Erbil and on Kurdish opposition groups operating near the Iranian border, locations where U.S. military forces and diplomatic facilities are also present.

Officials have not publicly confirmed whether Kurdish groups will mount cross-border operations, but security analysts say an incursion into Iranian territory could open a new front in the conflict.

Regional tensions surged further as an Iranian ballistic missile struck a state-run oil refinery in Bahrain’s Ma’ameer industrial zone late Thursday, causing several fires, the Associated Press reported.

U.S. Central Command, meanwhile, is asking the Pentagon to send more military intelligence officers to its headquarters in Tampa, Florida, to support operations against Iran for at least 100 days, but likely through September, according to a notification obtained by Politico.

Democrats’ last hope for a swift end to the conflict died in the House of Representatives Thursday when lawmakers defeated a war powers resolution that would have withdrawn U.S. forces from Iran and limited the president’s ability to carry out future hostilities. The vote was 212-219, mostly along party lines. A similar measure failed Wednesday in the Senate, also generally along party lines.

“Americans don’t want war — not Republican voters, not independents, not even many of Donald Trump’s MAGA base,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor Thursday. “They feel betrayed by what’s happening in the Middle East. And they feel betrayed by the senators in this chamber who refused to stand up for the Constitution and refused to put a check on Donald Trump’s belligerence.”

A majority of Americans (59%) disapprove of the U.S. decision to take military action against Iran, according to a CNN/SSRS poll released Monday.

Still, Trump has kept a boots-on-the-ground deployment on the table. Iranian leaders, for their part, say they are up to the task.

“We are waiting for them,” Araghchi, the foreign minister, told NBC News. “We are confident that we can confront them, and that would be a big disaster for them.”

(Quinton and Ceballos reported from Washington and Bulos from Beirut.)

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