Hours after the US and Israel said an air strike had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as part of the most ambitious series of attacks on Iran in decades, Iranian state media confirmed the 86-year-old leader's death on Saturday.
Several loud blasts were heard for a second day on Sunday 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 has 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.
US President Donald Trump said the air strikes 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 US timed the attacks to coincide with a meeting of Khamenei and his top aides, US sources familiar with the matter said.
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.
Experts said the deaths of Khamenei and other Iranian leaders would deal the country a major blow but 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 Americans hostage for 444 days, demanding the extradition of the deposed Shah from the US.
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 in a statement on Sunday.
Iran responded to Saturday's 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.
Major Middle Eastern airports, including Dubai, the world's busiest international travel hub, were shut on Saturday after the strikes on 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.
Tehran warned the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage through which one-fifth of global oil consumption passes, had been closed, raising expectations of a sharp jump in oil prices.
OPEC+ major oil producers are set to meet on Sunday and could consider a larger-than-planned output increase as several tanker owners, oil majors and trading houses suspended energy shipments through the Strait.
Israel and the US pounded Iran in a 12-day air war in June and warned they would strike again if Tehran persisted with nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Hundreds of civilians were killed and injured in the latest US and Israeli strikes, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, told an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on Saturday.
Iravani called Iran's retaliatory attacks 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.
