IRANIAN Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the United States, throwing the future of the Islamic Republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old’s death early on Sunday. US President Donald Trump had announced his death hours earlier, saying it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country.

 

The announcements came after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. Trump said the “heavy and pinpoint bombing” was to continue through the week or as long as necessary. Iran vowed revenge on Sunday after the killing of its supreme leader and traded strikes with Israel. Iran fired missiles at an ever-widening list of targets in Israel and Gulf Arab states in retaliation. As Israel and the US targeted other top officials, an airstrike on a meeting of the country’s defence council killed Iran’s Army chief of staff and Defence Minister, alongside the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a top Security Advisor to Khamenei. General Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Defence Minister General Aziz Nasirzadeh were killed at the meeting, along with Major General Mohammad Pakpour. Security Advisor Ali Shamkhani’s death was announced on Sunday morning. An enormous explosion rocked Iran’s capital on Sunday as the Israeli military said it was targeting the heart of the city. Blasts in Tehran sent a huge plume of smoke into the sky in an area where there are Government buildings.

 

Iranian authorities say more than 200 people have been killed since the start of the US and Israeli strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other senior leaders. In Israel, loud explosions caused by missile impacts or interceptions could be heard in Tel Aviv. Israel’s rescue services said eight people were killed and 28 wounded in a strike that hit a synagogue in the central town of Beit Shemesh, bringing the overall death toll in the country to 10. The US military said three service members have been killed and five others seriously wounded since the operations began. They are the first known American casualties from the fighting. Meanwhile, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a prerecorded message aired on state television that a new leadership council had begun its work, and Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a new supreme leader would be chosen in “one or two days.” The strikes and counterattacks underscored how the killing of Khamenei, and US President Donald Trump’s calls for the overthrow of the decades-old Islamic Republic, carried the potential for a prolonged conflict that could envelop the Middle East.

 

It’s the second time in eight months that the US and Israel have teamed up to use military force against Iran, and a startling show of military might for an American president who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars.” Iran vows revenge for Khamenei killing: “You have crossed our red line and must pay the price,” Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said in a televised address Sunday. “We will deliver such devastating blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg.” Trump warned that any retaliation would only lead to further escalation. “THEY BETTER NOT DO THAT,” Trump fired back in a social media post. “IF THEY DO, WE WILL HIT THEM WITH A FORCE THAT HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN BEFORE!” In a sign of how the attack could stoke regional unrest, hundreds of people stormed the US Consulate in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on Sunday. Police and paramilitary forces used batons and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, and at least nine people were killed in the clashes, authorities said. Iran retaliates with missiles and drone attacks: As US and Israeli strikes have pounded Iran, the Islamic Republic has retaliated with missiles and drone attacks on Israel and nearby Arab Gulf countries hosting US forces.

 

The air war could rattle global markets, particularly if Iran makes the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial traffic. Around 20 per cent of the world’s traded oil passes through the vital waterway, and oil prices are already set for swings. In repeated barrages across Israel, at least 10 people were killed and more than 120 injured, according to authorities. Many missiles were intercepted, the military said. Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said Sunday that Israel will have “a non-stop air train” of strikes against military and leadership targets in Iran. Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defense fire thudded over Dubai. The United Arab Emirates’ commercial capital has long drawn business and expatriates by billing itself as a safe haven in a volatile region. Shrapnel from Iranian attacks on the Emirates’ capital of Abu Dhabi killed two people, state media said, and debris from aerial interceptions caused fires at the city’s main port and on the facade of the iconic Burj Al Arab hotel. Attacks also extended into Oman - Iran’s longtime interlocutor with the West that hadn’t been drawn into the fray previously. Saudi Arabia condemned Iran’s attacks on its capital, Riyadh, and eastern region, saying it had successfully intercepted them. The kingdom noted that it had not allowed its airspace or territory to be used to target Iran. Jordan said it “dealt with” 49 drones and ballistic missiles.

 

Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar also said they had intercepted projectiles Sunday morning. Iran’s foreign minister blamed such strikes on the U.S. And Israel for starting the war. He said Iran’s military units are “somehow isolated” and acting on orders given in advance. He said he had spoken to his counterparts in the Gulf countries and urged them to pressure the U.S. And Israel to end the war. Iran forms council to govern until a new supreme leader is chosen: As supreme leader, Khamenei had final say on all major policies since 1989. He led Iran’s clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guard, the two main centers of power in the governing theocracy. Though Trump called on Saturday for the Iranian people to “take over” their Government, there was no sign in Tehran or elsewhere of unrest. In southern Iran, at least 165 people were reported killed when a girls’ school was struck, and dozens more were wounded, the local governor told Iranian state TV. Iran claims missile strike on US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln: Iran’s Revolutionary Guard says it attacked the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf after the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed by US and Israeli air strikes, as per Al Jazeera.

 

“The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was struck by four ballistic missiles,” the Guard said in a statement carried by local media, warning “the land and sea will increasingly become the graveyard of the terrorist aggressors,” Al Jazeera. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been operating in the Arabian Sea since the end of January. Trump says 9 Iranian warships have been sunk: US President Donald Trump says 9 ships in the Iranian navy have been sunk. Trump said on social media Sunday that the ships had been “destroyed” and sunk, “some of them relatively large and important.” Trump said the rest of Iran’s fleet of military vessels “will soon be floating at the bottom of the sea, also!” The President said that in a separate attack that Iran’s naval headquarters was “largely destroyed.