Trump vows to avenge first US deaths as Iran war intensifies

President Donald Trump vowed Sunday to avenge the first US deaths in the war he launched to topple Iran's cleric-run state, which fired missiles across the Middle East even as the headquarters of its elite Revolutionary Guards was reduced to rubble. Trump said he was planning for around four weeks of conflict after Saturday's massive US and Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iranian forces have responded with missiles and drones hitting targets across the Middle East, causing deaths in Israel and the United Arab Emirates as explosions shattered the peace of glitzy Gulf Arab economic hubs.

"I once again urge the Revolutionary Guard, the Iranian military and police to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death," Trump said in a video address from his Florida mansion. "It will be certain death. It won't be pretty," Trump said. The Pentagon said that three US service members were killed in the operation and five seriously wounded in the operation it has called "Epic Fury." "Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends," Trump said. "But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization."

Casualties are politically sensitive in the United States and Trump, who campaigned denouncing foreign interventions, has done little to explain the case for war to the US public. Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, said the deaths were the result of a "reckless decision" and that there was no threat to "justify this type of preemptive military strikes." While many in the Iranian diaspora cheered Khamenei's death, anger was seen on the streets of Iran's neighbor Pakistan where officials said 17 people were killed and protesters tried to storm the US consulate in Karachi.

The US military said it had destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), tasked with preserving the state and which has key influence in the country's economics and politics. "America has the most powerful military on earth, and the IRGC no longer has a headquarters," US Central Command said in a statement. Iran's surviving leaders have voiced defiance and said that counter-attacks were justified as self-defense.

In Israel, an Iranian missile attack killed at least nine people and injured dozens more in the central city of Beit Shemesh, after a death the previous day near Tel Aviv. Sirens also sounded in northern Israel after projectiles were detected from Lebanon, where Hezbollah -- the Shiite Muslim movement allied with Iran but diminished since an earlier Israeli offensive -- said it had a duty in "confronting the aggression." President Masoud Pezeshkian, whose elected role is subordinate to that of the supreme leader, called Khamenei's killing a "declaration of war against Muslims."

"Iran considers it its legitimate duty and right to avenge the perpetrators and masterminds of this historic crime," Pezeshkian said. Ali Larijani, the powerful head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, warned: "Today we will hit them with a force that they have never experienced before." Israel and the United States attacked Iran weeks after authorities ruthlessly crushed mass protests, killing thousands. The demonstrations, initially sparked by economic anxiety but also including calls for greater social freedoms, were considered one of the most serious threats to the religious state established in 1979.

Trump called on Iranians to rise up and "seize this moment to be brave, be bold, be heroic, and take back your country." "America is with you," he said. Reza Pahlavi, the son of the pro-Western shah ousted in the 1979 Islamic revolution, cautioned Iranians to stay vigilant in the face of air strikes and await the right moment to return to the streets. But he also urged "nightly chants" against the Islamic republic.

Cheers were heard as some Iranians celebrated reports of the death of Khamenei, but after state media confirmed his killing, pro-government demonstrations also formed, chanting "Death to America!" Iran named Ayatollah Alireza Arafi to join Pezeshkian on an interim leadership council to lead the country while a permanent successor is found for the supreme leader.