By Rami Ayyub, Jaidaa Taha, Elwely Elwelly and Hatem Maher
JERUSALEM, March 1 (Reuters) – Israel’s military said on Sunday it launched a broad wave of strikes in the heart of Tehran after its air force carried out a large-scale operation that killed Iran’s supreme leader, raising fears of widespread instability in the Middle East.
Over the past day Israel’s air force conducted strikes to open the “path to Tehran”, it added.
Hours after the U.S. and Israel said an air strike killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in the military campaign to overthrow the government of the Islamic Republic, Iran’s state media confirmed the 86-year-old leader had died.
Under Iran’s constitution, the Supreme Leader is appointed by the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body that supervises and in theory can sack that figure.
The Supreme Leader holds ultimate power in Iran, acting as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and deciding on the direction of foreign policy, defined largely by confrontation with the United States and Israel.
An adviser to Khamenei, Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani said a temporary leadership council would be set up based on the constitution until the next leader is chosen.
Two U.S. sources and a U.S. official familiar with the matter said Israel and the U.S. timed their attack on Saturday to coincide with a meeting Khamenei was holding with top aides.
Insiders in Iran said the ruling establishment would immediately seek to name a successor to Khamenei to signal stability and continuity.
In another blow for Iran’s leadership, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Abdolrahim Mousavi was killed in the strikes, broadcaster Iran TV said.
After Iran retaliated with airstrikes around the Gulf, Anwar Gargash, adviser to the president of U.S. ally and oil power the United Arab Emirates, urged Tehran to “go back to your senses”, saying the war is not with Iran’s Gulf Arab neighbours. The UAE has so far borne the heaviest brunt of Iran’s retaliation.
President Donald Trump warned on Sunday that the U.S. would hit Iran “with a force that has never been seen before” if it strikes back after the attacks on it.
“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!”
In remarks directed at Trump and his ally Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran’s parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said “we will strike you with such terrifying blows that you yourselves will be driven to beg”.
“I say to Trump and Netanyahu and their agents and proxies, I repeat, I say to these two filthy criminals and to all their agents: you have crossed our red line, and you must pay the price for it.”
Oman’s maritime security centre said that Palau-flagged oil tanker Skylight was attacked about five nautical miles off Oman’s Musandam. Four people were injured and the whole crew of 20 people was evacuated.
SECOND DAY OF LOUD BLASTS HEARD
Khamenei, who quashed the ambitions of several moderate elected presidents, had a following among fellow Shi’ites outside Iran in countries such as Iraq, where Tehran-backed armed groups threatened to retaliate after the U.S.-Israel strikes.
Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani expressed condolences over the killing of Khamenei, and urged Iranians to maintain unity in the face of attacks.
Pakistani police on Sunday clashed with protesters who breached the outer wall of the U.S. consulate in Karachi, leaving nine people dead, following news of U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that killed Khamenei.
Global air travel remained heavily disrupted as continued air strikes kept major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai – the world’s busiest international hub – closed in one of the biggest aviation interruptions in recent years.
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.
Two people were injured after shrapnel fell from drones following an interception by air defences over two houses in Dubai, one of several Gulf Arab cities that pride themselves on stability.
Iran, which had said it would target U.S. bases if attacked, hit a range of other targets, keeping the major oil-producing Gulf on edge.
Trump said the air strikes aimed to end a decades-long threat from Iran and ensure it could not develop a nuclear weapon.
He also 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
Iran’s 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.
Khamenei, who built Iran into a powerful anti-U.S. force and spread its sway across the Middle East during his 36-year iron-fisted rule, 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 Revolutionary Guards 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 Americans hostage for 444 days, demanding the extradition of the deposed Shah from the United States.
(Additional reporting by Parisa Hafezi in dubai, Reporting by Reuters bureaux; Writing by Michael Georgy; Editing by Sergio Non, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Hugh Lawson)
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