March 2 (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Lebanon will ban Hezbollah's military activities after Israel said it struck Hezbollah-linked sites in response to the group's missile and drone attacks following the reported killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

(Reporting by Laila Bassam and Maya Gebeily; Writng by Tala Ramadan; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

LONDON, March 2 (Reuters) - Donald Trump said he was "very disappointed" with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not allowing the U.S. to use the Diego Garcia air base to carry out strikes on Iran, the Daily Telegraph quoted the U.S. president as saying in an interview.

Britain had initially denied the U.S. permission to conduct air strikes from its bases, but on Sunday evening Starmer said he was accepting a request for their use in any "defensive strikes" the U.S. wanted to make against Iranian targets.

March 1 (Reuters) - A grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the late founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is likely to figure prominently in the deliberations of the clerics who will determine who replaces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Supreme Leader.

The killing of Khamenei, 86, in a U.S.-Israeli attack has brought new urgency to the question of who will be the next Supreme Leader, a long-simmering issue over which there had been no clarity despite his age.

By Nandita Bose, Gram Slattery and Bo Erickson

WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump pressed ahead with military strikes against Iran despite private warnings from senior aides that the escalation could be difficult to contain and carry political risks for Republicans in November's midterm elections, according to two senior White House officials and a Republican close to the administration.

NICOSIA, March 2 (Rtrs) - A passenger air terminal in Paphos, Cyprus, was evacuated on Monday after a suspect object was picked up on radars, the Cyprus state broadcaster reported.

Paphos airport on the western coast of the island lies within Republic of Cyprus territory. It is about 60 kilometres (37 miles) from Britain's RAF Akrotiri, which was hit by an unmanned drone overnight. Just after midday Monday (1000 GMT) sirens sounded at the British base, and aircraft took off.

(Writing by Michele KambasEditing by Gareth Jones)

Lebanon's government on Monday took the unprecedented step of banning Hezbollah's military and security activity, prompting the Iran-backed group to lash out at the decision.

Hezbollah is represented in both the government and parliament, and the move came hours after it announced it had launched rockets and drones towards Israel early Monday to avenge the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli attacks.

Israel began bombarding Beirut's southern suburbs and dozens of villages in south Lebanon, vowing to make the group pay a "heavy price".

By James Mackenzie

BERLIN, March 2 (Reuters) - German Chancellor Friedrich Merz faces a delicate task on Tuesday when he visits Washington for a meeting with President Donald Trump, now overshadowed by the U.S.-Israeli attack that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the weekend.

Merz will be the first European leader to meet Trump since the start of the operation, which has blocked one of the world's key oil shipping lanes and thrown global air transport into chaos.

By Francois Murphy

VIENNA, March 2 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog has no indication Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran have hit any nuclear facilities, its chief Rafael Grossi told the agency's Board of Governors on Monday, moments before Iran's envoy said one was targeted a day earlier.

Iran's nuclear programme has been among the reasons Israel and the U.S. have given for the attacks, alleging Iran was getting too close to being able to eventually make an atom bomb.

PARIS, March 2 (Reuters) - France is ready to help Gulf countries targeted by Iranian retaliatory strikes, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday, adding that the Israeli and U.S. initial strikes against Iran should have been debated beforehand at the United Nations.

"Regarding more specifically our partners in the region who have been targeted, deliberately aimed at by the Iranian regime, we stand ready to contribute to their defense," Barrot told reporters after chairing a crisis meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Paris.

MOSCOW, March 2 (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Monday that Russia was in constant contact with the Iranian leadership about what it called the "outright aggression" against Tehran and was deeply disappointed by how events had unfolded.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday condemned the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as a "cynical" murder and the Russian Foreign Ministry has accused the U.S. and Israel of plunging the Middle East "into an abyss of uncontrolled escalation."