DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran launched multiple attacks early Friday on Gulf Arab states, including dozens of drones at Saudi Arabia, following warnings from its new supreme leader about hosting American bases, and U.S. President Donald Trump threatened major new retaliation.
“Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today," Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. “Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated, and their leaders have been wiped from the face of the earth.”
The comments came the day after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei vowed to "not refrain from avenging the blood" of Iranians killed, and warned Gulf Arab nations to shut U.S. bases, saying the notion of American protection was "nothing more than a lie."
A large midday explosion rocked a Tehran square filled with demonstrators who were there for the annual Quds Day event in support of Palestinians, Iranian state television reported.
The cause of the blast in the area of Ferdowsi Square wasn't immediately known, but came shortly after Israel had warned people to clear the area because it planned a strike. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.
Ongoing attacks didn't deter thousands of people to take to the streets for Quds Day, with crowds chanting “death to Israel” and “death to America."
Footage from the square showed people shouting “God is the greatest” as smoke rose.
The U.S. military's Central Command said that four of six crew members of an American KC-135 refueling plane that went down in Iraq had been found dead and that recovery efforts were ongoing to find the other two. And a French soldier who was stationed in the north of the country was killed in an attack, the French president said Friday.
With growing global concerns about a possible energy crisis and no end to the war in sight, the price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, remained over $100 per barrel as Iran kept its stranglehold on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil transits on its way from the Persian Gulf to the open seas.
Brent prices have spiked as high as about $120 per barrel and are about 40% higher than when Israel and the United States attacked Iran on Feb. 28 to start the war.
Iran has been attacking ships that try to transit the strait, and Khamenei's comments — his first to the public since being named to replace his father, who was killed during the first day of the conflict — said that Iran would continue to block the waterway.
New attacks on Gulf nations
Iran has been attacking oil and other infrastructure around the Gulf region, and on Friday Saudi Arabia that it had downed nearly 50 drones sent in multiple waves.
In Oman, two people were killed when two drones crashed in an industrial area in the region of Sohar, the Oman News Agency reported.
Sirens also sounded in Bahrain warning of incoming fire, and black smoke billowed from an industrial area in Dubai, after a blaze that authorities said was sparked by debris from an interception.
A building at the Dubai International Financial Center also sustained damage when hit with debris from what authorities described as a “successful interception.” DIFC is an economic free zone for banks, capital traders and wealth managers, home to exclusive restaurants and nightclubs for the city-state’s elite.
Iran said earlier this week that it would target banks and financial institutions, after an airstrike hit a bank in Tehran.
Nearly 60 people were wounded in northern Israel after Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said that it had fired several rocket salvoes toward the area and at Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Almost all the injuries were described as very minor.
One person was killed in southwestern Beirut in an Israeli strike, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry, and another attack hit an apartment in the capital, leaving it engulfed in flames. Following the attacks, the Israeli army said that it had been targeting a member of Iran-linked Hezbollah.
In eastern Lebanon, a strike on an apartment wounded a local official with the Lebanese branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and killed his two sons, the state-run National News Agency reported. For the past two years, Israel has targeted officials with the group, known as al-Jamaa al-Islamiya or the Islamic Group.
More than 600 people have been killed in Lebanon since the fighting began, the Health Ministry has reported. and nearly 800,000 have been internally displaced, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Israel also said it had begun a wave of strikes on Iran targeting infrastructure. The military said that the Israeli air force had hit more than 200 targets in Iran over the past 24 hours, including missile launchers, defense systems and weapons production sites.
Before the blast in Tehran's Ferdowsi Square, Israel's military issued a warning on its Farsi-language X account that it would “conduct operations” there later in the day.
“Your presence in these areas puts your life at risk,” the Israeli military said.
It wasn't clear how people in Tehran would have been able to see the message, with the internet broadly shut down by Iran's theocracy, though many have workarounds.
Security official Ali Larijani, who was taking part in the Quds Day demonstrations, told Iranian media covering the event that the suspected Israeli attack was a “sign of its desperation.”
Iranian authorities say that more than 1,300 people have been killed there, and Israel has reported 12 deaths. The U.S. has lost at least 11 soldiers, while another eight have suffered severe injuries.
In his Friday morning post, Trump said that "we are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise."
“They’ve been killing innocent people all over the world for 47 years, and now I, as the 47th President of the United States of America, am killing them,” Trump said. “What a great honor it is to do so!”
Larijani said that Trump doesn’t understand that “the more pressure he puts on the people, the greater their willpower will be.”
French soldier killed in Iraq
On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron said that a French soldier was killed in an attack targeting Irbil in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. France earlier said that six soldiers had been hurt in a drone strike in Irbil, where French troops are deployed as part of a multinational counterterrorism mission supporting Iraqi forces in their fight against militants from the Islamic State group.
In the same region, U.K. officials said that several U.S. personnel suffered minor injuries Wednesday when drone strikes hit a base in Irbil that houses both British and American troops.
Italy said that a base where it has troops in Irbil was also hit Wednesday, but that there were no injuries. The Italian contingent in the region trains local Kurdish troops at the request of the Iraqi government
Recovery efforts were ongoing in western Iraq to try and find the other two crew of the American KC-135 refueling aircraft that crashed after four bodies were recovered, the U.S. military said.
U.S. Central Command said that the crash wasn't related to friendly or hostile fire, and that two aircraft were involved, including one that landed safely.
The KC-135 is the fourth publicly acknowledged aircraft to crash as part of the U.S. military's operations against Iran. Last week, three American fighter jets were mistakenly downed by friendly Kuwaiti fire.
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Rising reported from Bangkok and Abou AlJoud from Beirut. Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Sam Mednik in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this story.
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