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IRAN’S SECURITY CHIEF has vowed to hit the US and Israel with a force never seen before following their strikes on the Islamic republic which killed the country’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Yesterday Iran fired missiles at the United States and Israel, and they did hurt,” Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, said in a post on X.
“Today we will hit them with a force that they have never experienced before,” he added.
It came after the United States and Israel killed Khamenei in a wave of strikes yesterday against targets in Iran, which sparked swift retaliation by the Islamic republic.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the killing of supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was a “declaration of war against Muslims”, vowing vengeance.
Earlier, Iran’s army said it targeted US bases in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and in the Gulf in response to the attack launched by the US and Israel yesterday.
“A few minutes ago, pilots of the air forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran successfully bombed US bases in the countries of the Persian Gulf and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq over several phases of operations,” Iran’s army said in a statement carried by state TV.
Drones struck the Omani port of Duqm, injuring one worker, the Oman News Agency said, while an oil tanker was also targeted, resulting in some injuries.
Air raid sirens sounded and explosions were heard over Jerusalem after the Israeli military said it had detected missiles launched from Iran towards Israel.
AFP correspondents heard blasts in Dubai, east of the Saudi capital Riyadh, across Bahrain’s capital Manama and Qatar, where thick black smoke was also seen rising on the horizon south of Doha.
A top Emirati official warned Iran today that “your war is not with your neighbours” and that retaliation against Gulf states was a “miscalculation”.
The Israeli army announced today that it was again launching “large-scale” strikes targeting the “heart of Tehran”.
Its air force led the campaign “to establish aerial superiority and to pave the path to Tehran”.
A new series of powerful blasts were heard today in Tehran, AFP journalists in the Iranian capital reported. The source of the blasts was not immediately clear.
Yesterday, a strike conducted by the US and Israel hit a girls’ elementary school in Iran, killing 105 people, according to the Iranian Red Crescent.
Crowds have gathered in Iran’s south to call for vengeance following the killing of Khamenei in US and Israeli attacks, Iranian media has reported.
Similar gatherings took place elsewhere in Iran including in Tehran and the central city of Yazd.
Hundreds of protesters in Iraq, which officially declared three days of mourning for Khamenei, also tried to storm the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad, where the US embassy is located.
In Pakistan, eight people were killed as hundreds of protesters tried to storm the US consulate in the megacity of Karachi, the local rescue service said.
Several thousand Shia Muslims joined demonstrations in Indian-administered Kashmir, many chanting anti-Israel and anti-US slogans.
The US embassy in Oman told its staff and citizen to take cover due to “activity outside Muscat”, though it was not immediately clear what that activity was.
Iranian state television reported Khamenei’s death in the early hours of this morning, broadcasting archive images with a black banner.
Iranian media also reported the deaths of his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump had said hours earlier on his Truth Social platform.
“Heavy and pinpoint bombing… will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST,” Trump wrote.
He later warned Iran of force “never been seen before” after he said the Islamic republic indicated it was going to strike back “harder than they have ever hit.”
Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said the campaign sent a message to those who would do harm to Americans: “We will hunt you down and we will kill you.”
Irish citizens in the Gulf and wider Middle East have been advised to shelter in place and avoid unnecessary travel following the sharp escalation in conflict.
In a statement yesterday evening, Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee said she had been briefed by her department’s crisis centre and acknowledged the “anxiety and concerns of Irish citizens across the region”.
“Our advice at this time to citizens in the region is to shelter in place. You should follow the directions of the local authorities and advice issued on social media by the Irish Embassy to your country of residence,” McEntee said.
The minister confirmed she will join European counterparts at an emergency meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council this morning.
“Our travel advice remains that Irish citizens should not undertake travel to Iran. We also advise against travel to Israel,” she added.
Nearly a quarter of scheduled inbound flights to the Middle East were cancelled yesterday, with hundreds more cancellations already confirmed for today.
Globally, more than 19,000 flights have been delayed.
Iran, Iraq, Israel, Syria, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have all announced at least partial airspace closures.
The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting over the fighting, with Iran’s envoy accusing the US and Israel of committing a possible “war crime” by attacking civilians.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said military action in the Middle East “carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control”.
The UN’s nuclear agency will hold an extraordinary meeting on Iran tomorrow in the wake of the US-Israeli strikes, aimed in part at Tehran’s atomic programme.
In a statement late on Saturday, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the meeting was at the request of Russia, a key ally of Tehran.
Additional reporting by AFP
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