By Alexander Cornwell, Sarah El Safty, Yomna Ehab and Elwely Elwelly
TEL AVIV/DUBAI, March 1 (Reuters) – Israel said on Sunday it launched another wave of attacks on Iran, as Iranians grappled with uncertainty after the killing of their supreme leader in U.S. and Israeli strikes, while President Donald Trump warned of consequences for retaliation.
Hours after both nations said an air strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the military campaign to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic, its state media confirmed the 86-year-old leader’s death on Saturday.
In another blow for Iran’s leaders, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi was killed in strikes, broadcaster Iran TV said.
The United States will hit Iran “with a force that has never been seen before,” Trump warned on Sunday, if the Middle East nation hit back after the strikes.
“Iran just stated that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever been hit before,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
He added, “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT, HOWEVER, BECAUSE IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!”
Iran’s top security official, Ali Larijani, said a temporary leadership council would be set up.
He accused the United States and Israel of trying to plunder and disintegrate Iran and warned “secessionist groups” of a harsh response if they attempt action, state television said.
In remarks directed at Trump and his close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, said they had crossed a red line and would “pay for it”.
A source briefed on the Israeli campaign told Reuters there had been no change in military strategy after the killing of Khamenei and that strikes would continue to target Iranian officials and missile infrastructure.
SECOND DAY OF LOUD BLASTS HEARD
Several loud blasts were heard for a second day on Sunday in regional business hub Dubai and over Qatar’s capital of Doha, witnesses said, after Iran launched retaliatory strikes on the neighbouring Gulf states.
Puffs of white smoke from missile interceptions were glimpsed in the skies over Dubai, while billows of dark smoke rose over its port of Jebel Ali, one of the busiest in the Middle East.
Iran, which has said it would target U.S. bases if attacked, hit a range of other targets, keeping the major oil-producing Gulf on edge.
Air raid sirens sounded repeatedly across Israel early on Sunday, with a series of explosions heard in Tel Aviv as Israel’s sophisticated air defense system sought to intercept the latest Iranian offensive.
There was no immediate report of damage or injuries.
Trump said the air strikes aimed to end a decades-long threat from Iran and ensure it could not develop a nuclear weapon.
He sought to justify a risky gambit that seemed to contradict his professed opposition to American involvement in complex overseas conflicts.
“This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Trump and Netanyahu told Iranians to pursue a rare chance to topple their clerical leaders.
LEADERS ALREADY FACED PRESSURE ON SEVERAL FRONTS
The leadership had already been under pressure from an economy hammered by sanctions, protesters who proved ready again to take to the streets despite fierce crackdowns and regional proxies severely weakened by Israeli attacks.
Israel and the United States timed the attacks to coincide with a meeting of Khamenei and his top aides, said two U.S. sources and a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
Khamenei was working in his office at the time of Saturday’s attack, state media said. It also killed his daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law.
Experts said that while the deaths of Khamenei and other Iranian leaders would deal the country a major blow, it would not necessarily spell the end of Iran’s entrenched clerical rule or the sway of the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps over the population.
Trump evoked the 1979 storming of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, when Iranian student activists in coordination with radical clerics took 52 American hostage for 444 days, demanding the extradition of the deposed Shah from the United States.
Israel’s military said it targeted Iran’s ballistic missile and air defense systems with strikes on Sunday morning.
Iran’s armed forces would soon retaliate again with their biggest offensive against U.S. bases and Israel, the Revolutionary Guards vowed in a statement on Sunday.
Iran responded to Saturday’s initial attacks by launching hundreds of missiles and drones targeting U.S. troops and cities in Israel and Arab countries allied with Washington, prompting widespread cancellations of Middle East flights.
The Pentagon said there were no U.S. deaths or injuries.
ONE OF GLOBAL AVIATION’S WORST DISRUPTIONS
Major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai, the world’s busiest international travel hub, were shut on Saturday after Iran’s missile retaliation unleashed one of global aviation’s most severe disruptions in years.
Dubai’s landmark Burj Al Arab hotel and the airport, which handles more than 1,000 flights a day, were damaged in an overnight attack on sites across the Arab Gulf states that also hit airports in Abu Dhabi and Kuwait.
On Saturday, Tehran warned that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow conduit for about a fifth of global oil consumption, raising expectations of a sharp jump in oil prices.
The OPEC+ grouping of major oil producers is set to meet on Sunday and may consider a larger-than-planned output increase as several tanker owners, oil majors and trading houses suspended energy shipments through the Strait.
After Israel pounded Iran in a 12-day air war in June, joined by the United States, both warned they would strike again if Tehran persisted with nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Simon Lewis, Clarence Fernandez and Michael Georgy; Editing by Sergio Non and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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