Israel launched a new wave of strikes on Tehran on Sunday, saying it aimed to dominate the skies after assassinating Iran’s supreme leader and leaving the Islamic Republic grappling to rebuild its leadership amid its biggest test in five decades.
US and Israeli strikes — and Iranian retaliation — sent shockwaves through sectors from shipping to air travel to oil, amid warnings of rising energy costs and disruption to business in the Gulf, a strategic waterway and global trade hub.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said a leadership council composed of himself, the judiciary head and a member of the powerful Guardians Council had temporarily assumed the duties of Supreme Leader following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has appointed Alireza Arafi to its interim Leadership Council.
The US military said it had sunk an Iranian ship, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had launched an attack on the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln with four ballistic missiles, state media reported.
In a sign of widening turmoil, Israel’s ambulance service said nine people were killed by a missile strike in the town of Beit Shemesh, the United Arab Emirates said Iranian attacks killed three people and Kuwait reported one dead in Iranian raids.
The Israeli military said that over the past day Israeli planes had conducted strikes to open the “path to Tehran”, and the majority of aerial defence systems in western and central Iran had been dismantled.
It added: “Ali Khamenei was targeted in a precise, large-scale operation carried out by the Israeli Air Force, guided by accurate IDF intelligence, while he was in his central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran, where he was together with additional senior officials”.
Israeli military spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani said many targets remained, including sites of military?industrial production. “We have the capabilities and the targets to keep going on for as long as necessary,” he said.
Asked if Israel was considering deploying ground forces, Shoshani said that was not under consideration even though US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged Iranians to seize a rare opportunity to topple their leaders.
Hours after the US and Israel said an air strike killed Khamenei, Iran’s state media confirmed the 86-year-old leader had died.
In a sign of disruption to energy supplies, at least 150 tankers including crude oil and liquefied natural gas vessels dropped anchor in open Gulf waters beyond the Strait of Hormuz and dozens more were stationary on the other side of the chokepoint, shipping data showed on Sunday, after the USand Israeli strikes.
The United States will hit Iran “with a force that has never been seen before,” US President Donald Trump said, should the Middle East nation retaliate for US strikes.
“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.
Separately, three US service members have been killed and another five have been seriously wounded, in the first casualties of the unfolding U.S. operations against Iran, the US military said on Sunday.
The casualties were announced on the second day of strikes by the US and Israel against Iran, which have plunged the Middle East into a new, unpredictable conflict that has already led to the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The US military’s Central Command said in a statement on Sunday that U.S. troops suffered additional, less serious injuries as well.
“Several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions – and are in the process of being returned to duty. Major combat operations continue and our response effort is ongoing,” Central Command said in a statement on X.
It declined to offer specifics of how the U.S. forces were killed and wounded, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have launched blistering rounds of drones and missiles at targets throughout the Middle East.
The U.S. deaths are the first combat-related fatalities suffered by the U.S. military in major operations ordered by President Donald Trump since he returned to office last year. The U.S. bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites last June and the US military’s seizure of Venezuela’s president in January led to no U.S. fatalities.
Later, US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that Iran’s new leadership wants to talk to him and that he has agreed, according to an interview with The Atlantic magazine.