IRG head, top security adviser too dead
*3 dead in UAE in Iranian strikes, Indian among 58 injured
DUBAI, Mar 1:
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack by Israel and the United States, Iranian state media confirmed early Sunday, throwing the future of the Islamic Republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability.
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President Donald Trump announced the death hours earlier, saying it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country.
State media reported that the 86-year-old was killed in an airstrike targeting his compound in downtown Tehran. Satellite photos from Airbus showed that the site was heavily bombed.
His death at his office “showed that he consistently stood among the people and at the forefront of his responsibilities, confronting what officials call global arrogance,” state TV said.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote in a social media post. He warned of “heavy and pinpoint bombing” that he said would continue throughout the week and even beyond, part of a lethal assault the U.S. has justified as necessary to disable the country’s nuclear capabilities.
Iran, which responded to the strikes with its own counterassault, warned of retribution, with the Cabinet saying that this “great crime will never go unanswered.” The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever targeting Israeli and American bases.
The attack opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention in Iran, carried the potential for retaliatory violence and a wider war, and represented a startling flex of military might for an American president who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars.” Click here to watch video
The killing of Khamenei in the second Trump administration assault on Iran in eight months appeared certain to create a leadership vacuum given the absence of a known successor and because the 86-year-old supreme leader had final say on all major policies during his decades in power. He led Iran’s clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guard, the two main centers of power in the governing theocracy.
State media also reported the deaths of the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a top security adviser to Khamenei in airstrikes. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour took over as the Guard’s top commander after Israel killed its past commander in the 12-day war last June. The adviser, Ali Shamkhani, had long been a figurehead within Iran’s security establishment, IRNA said.
As reports trickled out about Khamenei’s death, eyewitnesses in Tehran told The Associated Press that some residents were rejoicing, cheering from rooftops, blowing whistles and letting out ululations.
Mourners raised a black mourning flag over the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and a major pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims. The Iranian government declared 40 days of public mourning and a seven-day nationwide public holiday to commemorate Khamenei’s death.
Citing unidentified sources, the semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that several relatives of Khamenei were also killed, including a daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and grandchild.
The joint U.S.-Israel operation, which officials say was planned for months, took place Saturday during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan and at the start of the Iranian workweek. It followed stilted negotiations and warnings from Trump, who last year trumpeted his administration’s success in incapacitating the country’s nuclear program but nonetheless cast the latest round as necessary to head off its potential resurgence.
Iran responded to the latest strikes by launching missiles and drones toward Israel and targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. The Israeli military said Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel, with many intercepted. The Magen David Adom rescue service said Saturday night that a woman in the Tel Aviv area died after being wounded in an Iranian missile attack.
At least three explosions were heard Saturday evening near the Intelligence Ministry building in northern Tehran, witnesses said, adding that air defense systems had begun operating there. Israel’s military said it had begun new strikes against missile launchers and aerial defense systems in central Iran.
In southern Iran, at least 115 people were reported killed when a girls’ school was struck, and dozens more were wounded, the local governor told Iranian state TV. U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said he was “aware of reports” that a girls’ school was struck and that officials were looking into them.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA said at least 15 people were killed in the southwest, quoting the governor of the Lamerd region, Ali Alizadeh, as saying a sports hall, two residential areas and a hall near a school were hit.
Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defense fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ commercial capital. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the UAE capital killed one person, state media said.
Earlier, Iran fired missiles at an ever-widening list of targets in Israel and Gulf Arab states in retaliation while Israel pledged “non-stop” strikes against Iran’s leaders and military.
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.”
Meanwhile, Iranian strikes across the UAE in the past two days have resulted in three fatalities and 58 injured, including an Indian national, officials confirmed on Sunday.
The Indian Embassy in the UAE in a social media post said it was aware of the injury to the Indian national and is in touch with the hospital authorities.
“The Indian national is out of danger. We are rendering all possible assistance,” it said.
Iranian state media say the death toll from a strike on a girls’ school in the country’s south has climbed to 165.
The Israeli military said it was not aware of any strikes in that area, and the US military said it was looking into the reports.
The state-run IRNA news agency quoted a local prosecutor as saying another 96 people were wounded in the strike.
Meanwhile, 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.”
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