TEHRAN: Iranian officials led a pro-government rally in Tehran as explosions rocked the city on Friday, while the United States vowed it would intensify strikes in the coming hours and days.
The hardline stances and renewed strikes unleashed by Israel and Iran presaged no let-up in the conflict engulfing the Middle East and roiling the global energy market.
AFP journalists in Tehran reported loud blasts over the city as Israel’s military said it had carried out 7,600 strikes in Iran since the war started on February 28, with most targeting the country’s missile programme.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told a news conference the US military would bombard Iran more heavily on Friday than any other day so far in the war.
He also said Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, was “wounded and likely disfigured” in the attack that killed his father and predecessor Ali Khamenei at the start of the US-Israeli campaign.
READ MORE: Pentagon chief says US intensifying strikes on Iran
President Donald Trump said on social media that he viewed it “a great honour” to be killing Iran’s rulers, calling them “deranged scumbags”.
He later said in an interview on Fox News Radio that the United States would be hitting Iran hard over the “over the next week”.
While Mojtaba Khamanei has not appeared since being named supreme leader, other Islamic republic officials walked in the open in Tehran with pro-government demonstrators who waved flags and brandished banners reading “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.
Iran’s state media said at least one woman was killed when blasts hit an area near the demonstration.
“These attacks are out of fear, out of desperation,” said Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, who attended the rally to mark Quds Day, the last Friday of Ramadan and a day of support for the Palestinian cause.
“It’s clear that it (the enemy) has failed,” said Larijani in a speech broadcast on state TV.
President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also attended the rally, while images on Iranian media showed the head of the judiciary being interviewed just as a blast occurred.
Shortly afterwards, state television said Iran had launched a fresh salvo of missiles at Israel. Explosions were later heard on the outskirts of Tel Aviv, but Israeli paramedics reported no casualties.
Earlier, a strike on the Israeli town of Zarzir wounded around 60 people, according to police, with AFP images showing burnt-out vehicles and craters in the ground.
Iran also kept up launches of drone and missile strikes against neighbouring states hosting US military assets.
Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry said on Friday its forces had intercepted dozens of drones, while an AFP journalist reported an explosion heard over Dubai that rattled buildings.
Turkey said NATO forces shot down a ballistic missile launched from Iran — the third such interception in the war.
The conflict has sparked chaos in global markets and sent oil prices soaring.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have all but closed the Gulf’s strategic Strait of Hormuz through which 20 percent of global oil supplies pass.
“Every day on the ship, I can see missile launches and hear explosions, making me feel like I was in danger,” a sailor stuck on one of the ships unable to pass through the strait, Wang Shang, told AFP.
The US government has said that the US Navy would likely not be able to escort ships through the strait until the end of the month.
On Friday, the White House and Pentagon lashed out at CNN for a report suggesting that Washington had underestimated Iran’s ability to disrupt oil traffic through the strait.
“The Pentagon has been planning for Iran’s desperate and reckless closure of the Strait of Hormuz for DECADES,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X.
Within Iran, the Revolutionary Guards have warned of an even stronger response to any anti-government protests, after ones in January in which several thousand people were killed.
Iranian authorities have maintained an internet blackout since the war started.
Iranians speaking to AFP under cover of anonymity have described a grim picture of cities in ruins and cash running short.
“Bread is now rationed. The population is extremely tense and outraged,” one 30-year-old woman in Kermanshah, western Iran, told AFP.
Another woman in the city said “countless” people from Tehran had come to seek refuge from the airstrikes, adding to demand for food and scarce medicine, with prices “nearly doubling”.
“As a result, locals face serious shortfalls… the situation is extremely tough,” she said.
The UN refugee agency has estimated that up to 3.2 million people have been displaced inside Iran since the war started.
Iran’s health ministry said on March 8 that more than 1,200 people have been killed, a figure AFP has not been able to verify independently.
The US military has lost 13 personnel since the war started — including all six members of a refuelling aircraft that crashed in Iraq after an incident officials said was not caused by hostile fire.
Pentagon chief Hegseth said the US and Israel have so far struck more than 15,000 targets.
In another sign of the war’s spread, President Emmanuel Macron announced the death of France’s first soldier, in an attack in the Erbil region of Iraq.
The conflict has also battered Lebanon, with authorities reporting at least 687 people killed by Israeli attacks.
Israel’s military said it has conducted 1,100 strikes in Lebanon, including 200 it said hit 200 “missile and launcher targets” and 35 command-and-control sites of the Iran-backed Hezbollah armed group. It said it had killed more than 380 members of Hezbollah.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, at the start of a visit to Beirut, called on Israel and Hezbollah to “stop the war”.
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