Iran could be hours away from installing a new supreme leader, with state Fars News reporting early Saturday that a successor may be selected within the next 24 hours, but there are signs of a potential factional power struggle - somewhat expected given the complex history of reform vs. hardline Islamic interpretations inside Iran.

The outlet cited sources within the Assembly of Experts, which is the 88-member body of Islamic jurists elected every eight years and tasked with choosing the country's top clerical authority. The process was "paused" this week amid the heavy bombing campaign. 

There were reports earlier this week that the US-Israeli Operation Epic Fury had struck a Tehran building where the Assembly of Experts were meeting, but such battlefield claims by US and Israeli officials remain hard to ultimately verify, given the intensify of the bombardment and fog of war.

The development comes as the war continues to intensify, as President Trump vows to keep hitting Iran harder.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Tehran will "never surrender" to Washington or Tel Aviv, even as he issued an apology to neighboring Gulf states after Iranian strikes targeted locations linked to American military assets stationed in the region. And civilian sites in Gulf cities have also clearly been directly hit, such as airports - though the Iranians' own airports have been struck.

The process for choosing a new Supreme Leaders is likely intense as the bombs fall, and there's likely internal divide over how to handle the crisis among the country's long-standing political factions...

One name has emerged as likely front-runner, at least according to the Western media consensus: 

The senior clerics responsible for selecting Iran’s next supreme leader met on Tuesday to deliberate, and the son of the slain former leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, emerged as the clear front-runner, according to three Iranian officials familiar with the deliberations.

The officials said that the clerics were considering announcing that the son, Mojtaba Khamenei, would be his father’s successor as early as Wednesday morning but that some had expressed reservations, fearing that it could expose him as a target for the United States and Israel. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal deliberations.

Indeed already the US has said that potential successors have already been taken out, including some that President Trump said he might have been OK with.

Any new Ayatollah would likely immediately be targeted especially by Israel, and is thus likely to be even more 'hard line' than the slain Khamenei. Even the CIA has long admitted in analysis that this will be the likely outcome.

Any new religious leader must also have the support of the hard line IRGC, which is effectively running the country and the military response at this point.