Explosion shakes Iran’s capital as Israel launches fresh attack

An enormous explosion rocked Iran’s capital Sunday as the Israeli military said it was targeting the heart of the city.

It comes after Iran earlier fired missiles at targets in Israel and Gulf Arab states, vowing massive retaliation for the killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by the United States and Israel.

The blast in Tehran sent a huge plume of smoke into the sky and shook the ground. It wasn’t immediately clear what the target was.

The blast appeared centered in a neighbourhood that is home to the country’s police headquarters and Iranian state television. The Israeli military said it was striking targets in central Tehran.

Khamenei’s death in a joint Israeli-American airstrike Saturday on his Tehran office has thrown the future of the Islamic Republic into question and raised the risk of regional instability.

Iran’s Cabinet vowed that this “great crime will never go unanswered” and the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever, targeting Israeli and American bases.

“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.”

U.S. President Donald 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!”

As Israel and the U.S. 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 adviser to Khamenei.

Concerns about stability in the region

Gen. Abdol Rahim Mousavi and Defence Minister Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh were killed at the meeting, along with Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, who 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.

In a sign of how the attack could spread instability throughout the region, hundreds of Shia Muslims stormed the U.S. Consulate in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi on Sunday, smashing windows.

Police and paramilitary forces used batons and fired tear gas to disperse the crowd, said Mohammad Jawad, a police official. At least six people were killed in clashes, authorities said. Shia Islam is the predominant branch in Iran, though its followers are a minority in Pakistan.

Oman said an oil tanker in the strategic Strait of Hormuz came under attack, wounding four mariners on board. The attack targeted a Palau-flagged vessel called Skylight, the state-run Oman News Agency said. It described the crew as Indian and Iranian.

It wasn’t clear who attacked the vessel, but it came as authorities have said Iran has been threatening ships travelling the strait via radio since the United States and Israel launched their attack on Iran.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a militant group claimed responsibility for a drone attack “targeting American bases in Irbil,” according to the Rudaw media outlet. Smoke could be seen from an area where the U.S. has an air base there, but it was not immediately clear whether it had been hit.

Iran retaliates

After the initial strikes, Iran immediately launched missiles and drones toward Israel and 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.

Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defence fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ commercial capital, with explosions continuing into Sunday morning. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the UAE capital killed one person, 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.

Saudi Arabia said Iran targeted its capital and eastern region in an attack that was repelled and Jordan said it “dealt with” 49 drones and ballistic missiles.

The strikes could rattle global markets, particularly if Iran makes the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial traffic. A third of worldwide oil exports transported by sea passed through the strait in 2025.

The attack on Iran opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention, and carried the potential for retaliatory violence and a wider war, representing 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.”

Iran to choose new supreme leader

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 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.

Iran quickly formed a council to govern the country until a new supreme leader is chosen.

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 flag over the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad and 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 reported that several relatives of Khamenei were also killed, including a daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and grandchild.

Strikes were planned for months

The joint U.S.-Israel operation, which officials say was planned for months, started 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.

The U.S. military said targets in Iran included Revolutionary Guard command facilities, air defence systems, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields.

It reported no U.S. casualties and minimal damage at U.S. bases despite “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks.”

Democrats decried that Trump had taken action without congressional authorization. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration had briefed several Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress in advance.

Tensions soared as U.S. built up military forces

Tensions have soared in recent weeks as the Trump administration built up the largest force of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades. The president insisted he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program while the country struggled with growing dissent following nationwide protests.

Though Trump had pronounced the Iranian nuclear program obliterated in strikes last year, the country was rebuilding infrastructure that it had lost, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump’s decision-making process.

The official said intelligence showed that Iran had developed the capability to produce its own high-quality centrifuges, an important step in developing the highly enriched uranium needed for weapons.

Iran had said it hoped to avert a war, but it maintained its right to enrich uranium.

Iran has said it has not enriched since June, but it has blocked international inspectors from visiting the sites the U.S. bombed. Satellite photos analyzed by AP have shown new activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material.

Attack was co-ordinated between Israel and U.S.

Israel said the operation had been planned for months with the United States. Air Force pilots struck “hundreds of targets across Iran,” Israeli military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

Targets in the Israeli campaign included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

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.

An Iranian diplomat told the United Nations Security Council that hundreds of civilians were killed and wounded in the strikes.

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.