By Alexander Cornwell and Sarah El Safty
TEL AVIV/DUBAI, March 1 (Reuters) – Israel said it launched another wave of strikes on Iran on Sunday, as Iranians grappled with uncertainty after the killing of their supreme leader in U.S. and Israeli strikes that threaten to destabilize the wider Middle East.
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.
Several loud blasts were heard for a second day on Sunday in the area of regional business hub Dubai and over Qatar’s capital of Doha, witnesses said, after Iran launched retaliatory strikes on the neighbouring Gulf states in response to the strikes.
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 SAYS STRIKES AIM TO END IRAN THREAT
U.S. President Donald 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 his close ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Iranians the attacks offered them a rare chance to topple their clerical leaders.
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 Revolutionary Guards’ sway 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 elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps 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.
IRAN POUNDS KEY REGIONAL FACILITIES
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.
OPEC+ major oil producers are 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.
Hundreds of civilians were killed and injured in the U.S. and Israeli strikes, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Saturday.
Iravani called Iran’s retaliatory attacks a matter of self defence, saying the bases of hostile forces were legitimate military targets.
Witnesses said some Iranians took to the streets in Tehran, the nearby city of Karaj and the central city of Isfahan to celebrate after reports of Khamenei’s death.
Videos posted on social media, which Reuters was unable to immediately verify, also showed celebrations elsewhere.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Simon Lewis, Clarence Fernandez and Michael Georgy; Editing by Sergio Non and Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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