March 8 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump is weighing the option of deploying special forces on the ground to seize Iran’s near-bomb-grade uranium, Bloomberg News reported on Sunday, citing three diplomatic officials briefed on the matter.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

(Reporting by Rhea Rose Abraham in Bengaluru)

By Orhan Qereman

QAMISHLI, Syria March 8 (Reuters) - Kurdish residents of northeast Syria warned Iran's Kurds against aligning with the U.S. to fight the Iranian government, citing their own experience in Syria in recent months as evidence their Iranian counterparts would be "abandoned."

Iranian Kurdish militias based in northern Iraq have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether and how to attack security forces in western Iran, as the United States and Israel pound Iran with air strikes, Reuters has reported.

Iran fired missiles at Israel and Gulf nations early Monday after the Islamic republic named Mojtaba Khamenei its new leader to succeed his late father despite threats by the United States and Israel to target him next.

Nine days after US-Israeli strikes killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and plunged the Middle East into war, Iranian clerics picked the country's third supreme leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

By Parisa Hafezi and Angus McDowall

DUBAI, March 8 (Reuters) - Iran's next leader faces a massive external assault and growing internal anger, and while previous leaders relied on a hardcore of diehard ideologues in the population, it is far from clear how far his successor can do the same.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by U.S. and Israeli strikes a week ago and his hardline son Mojtaba Khamenei is seen as a frontrunner to succeed him.

CAIRO, March 8 (Reuters) - An Israeli air strike killed at least two Palestinians in Gaza City on Sunday, local health officials said, the deadliest incident in Gaza since Israel and the United States launched their war against Iran a week ago.

Medics said the two people were travelling in a car near Al-Azhar University in western Gaza City. Their identities were not immediately clear. Several other people in the area were wounded in the strike, the health officials added.

US President Donald Trump warned on Sunday that Iran's next supreme leader would not last long without his approval, as Tehran prepared to reveal the successor to the slain Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Nine days into the war that killed the supreme leader, three members of Iran's Assembly of Experts said the organisation had chosen a successor, but several hours after those statements no name had been revealed.

Oil prices surged above $100 a barrel for the first time in nearly four years on Sunday over worries that the spiralling Middle East war could create prolonged supply disruptions.

Both crude oil benchmarks, the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent, jumped by over 15 percent as markets opened Sunday evening, touching levels not seen since the early months of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

KYIV, March 8 (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he and Dutch Prime Minister Rob Jetten discussed joint arms production during his visit to Kyiv on Sunday, and he stressed Ukraine's unique experience in defending against Iranian-made drones used by Russia.

"It is important that we are producing weapons together with the Netherlands – and we will certainly continue and expand this joint work," Zelenskiy said on X, adding they had discussed investments and possible production volumes in detail.

Iran's foreign minister said Sunday that the Iranian people, not Donald Trump, will elect their new leader and demanded that the US president apologize for starting the war with Iran.

"We allow nobody to interfere in our domestic affairs. This is up to the Iranian people to elect their new leader," Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC's "Meet the Press."

Trump on Sunday reiterated his demand to have a say in picking Iran's next supreme leader after Ali Khamenei died in the opening salvos of the US-Israeli attack that began nine days ago.

Iraq, which had recently regained some stability after decades of conflict, was immediately dragged into the Middle East war triggered when the United States and Israel attacked Iran last weekend.

Within hours, warplanes filled Iraq's airspace. Air strikes pounded bases hosting Tehran-backed groups across the country. Iran-backed groups in turn launched attacks on US interests in Iraq, while Tehran struck Kurdish militants in the north.