Blast rocks Tehran amid latest wave of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes

As American and Israeli strikes pound off persia — patch it attacks merchant vessels and vim infrastructure across the Persian Gulf — U.S. President Donald Trump made a new threat to Tehran's leaders.

"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 wrote online early Friday. "What a great honor it is to do so!"

The latest attacks come as Israel said it had begun a wave of strikes targeting Iran's 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, defence systems and weapons production sites.

A large explosion also struck a square in the capital filled with demonstrators for the annual Quds Day event in support of Palestinians, Iranian state television reported.

The cause of the blast in Ferdowsi Square wasn't immediately known, but came shortly after Israel warned people to clear the area because it planned to "conduct operations" there later in the day.

"Your presence in these areas puts your life at risk," the Israeli military warned on its Farsi-language X account.

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.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

The ongoing attacks didn't deter thousands of people taking 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.

Security official Ali Larijani, who was taking part in the 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 wrote that "we are totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran, militarily, economically, and otherwise."

Iran's new supreme leader vows to keep Hormuz shut, ramp up attacks

Iran, meanwhile, 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.

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."

The U.S. Military's Central Command said that four of six crew members of an American KC-135 refuelling plane that went down in Iraq had been found dead and that recovery efforts were ongoing to find the other two. A French soldier who was stationed in the north of the country was also 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 US 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.

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.

In Turkey, NATO defences intercepted another ballistic missile fired from Iran, the third time since the war began. Residents in the southern city of Adana reported hearing a loud explosion and sirens sounding at Incirlik Air Base, which is used by U.S. Forces, in the early hours of the day.

Turkey's Defence Ministry said that the missile was destroyed by NATO air defences deployed in the eastern Mediterranean.

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