By Alexander Cornwell and Sarah El Safty, Reuters
Plumes of smoke rise following reported explosions in Tehran on 1 March.
Photo: AFP / ATTA KENARE
Israel launches fresh strikes
New blasts heard in Dubai and Doha
Air raid sirens sound in Israel
Israel has launched another wave of strikes on Iran, as Iranians grappled with uncertainty after the killing of their supreme leader in US and Israeli strikes that threatened to destabilise the wider Middle East.
Hours after both nations said an airstrike 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.
Several loud blasts were heard for a second day 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 said it would target US 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 defence system sought to intercept the latest Iranian offensive.
There was no immediate report of damage or injuries.
People gather to mourn the death of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in joint US and Israeli strikes, at a square in Tehran.
Photo: ATTA KENARE/AFP
Trump say strikes aim to end Iran threat
US President Donald Trump said the airstrikes 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 co-incide with a meeting of Khamenei and his top aides, said two US sources and a US 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.
While the deaths of Khamenei and other Iranian leaders would deal the country a major blow, experts said 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 US embassy in Tehran, when Iranian student activists – in co-ordination 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 defence systems with strikes on Sunday morning.
Iran’s armed forces would soon retaliate again with their biggest offensive against US bases and Israel, the elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps vowed.
Iran responded to initial attacks by launching hundreds of missiles and drones targeting US troops, and cities in Israel and Arab countries allied with Washington, prompting widespread cancellations of Middle East flights.
The Pentagon said there were no US deaths or injuries.
An Iranian projectile leaving a trail in the sky, seen from the West Bank city of Hebron early on 1 March, 2026.
Photo: AFP/ Hazem Bader
Iran pounds key regional facilities
Major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai – the world’s busiest international travel hub – were shut, 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 1000 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 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 will 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 programmes.
Hundreds of civilians were killed and injured in the US and Israeli strikes, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.
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 also showed celebrations elsewhere.
See how Sunday’s events unfolded with RNZ’s live blog:
– Reuters