Iran’s president apologises for strikes on neighbours as missiles and drones still pound their cities

By Jon Gambrell and Sam Mednick/AP

Iran’s president apologised on Saturday for regional attacks even as its missiles and drones flew toward Gulf Arab states and U.S. President Donald Trump threatened that the country would be “hit very hard.”

President Masoud Pezeshkian, one member of a tripartite leadership council overseeing Iran since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a February 28 airstrike that started the war, delivered the message a week into the conflict that has spread across the region, rattled global markets 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, underlined the limited powers exercised by the theocracy’s leaders over its paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which controls the ballistic missiles targeting Israel and other countries. It answered only to Khamenei and now appears to be picking its own targets as