Israel continues to strike Iran after Ayatollah's death

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“I'm Alex Redson, and at 14 hours GMT on Sunday, the first of March,”

we're looking at the continuing fallout from US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

The country has come under attack for a second day following the death of the Iranian

Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Kaminai. Many Iranians have been celebrating the demise of the man they blame for thousands of deaths, despite an official declaration of mourning. In this edition we'll hear the latest from these strikes in Iran, and Tehran strikes on Israel and across the Middle East. We'll ask what legal basis President Trump had to launch these attacks,

and how it's being seen by his supporters and rivals. And we'll find out what happens next in Tehran, now that the regime is without its Supreme Leader.

“In the last edition of the global news podcast, we reported that Iran's”

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Kaminai had been killed in his office in the first wave of US

Israeli strikes on Saturday. In the hours since then, loud explosions have again been heard across Tehran, as Israel maintains its operations against the Iranian capital. Many Iranians inside and outside the country celebrated the news that the man who held absolute power for 40 years was dead.

But others mourned his death, including these people on the streets of the Iranian capital. Several high-ranking officials were also killed in Saturdays attacks. The Israeli military named 7 senior Iranian defense officials among the dead. The Iranian President Masood Pasechgan said the killing of the Ayatollah was a declaration of war against Muslims and said it was Iran's legitimate duty to

avenge him. At least analysts, Sebastian Asher told me just how significant a moment this is. From the perspective of the US and Israel, I mean, they couldn't have been a better start to this campaign to have taken out the supreme leader in the opening hours. I mean, it seems clear now that that was the reason why the attack took place when it did because the opportunity presented itself.

I mean, last summer during the 12-day war, President Trump had spoken about the US and Israel's ability to kill Hamanai if they wanted to, but they seem to sense then that Trump was holding back from that. The fact that they have targeted him and done so successfully shows the huge gulf between what happened then and what's happening now that this is aimed at a complete root and branch change in the way that the Iranian regime is functioning,

if it continues to function at all. As far as the regime itself is concerned, I mean, obviously it's a huge blow practically and symbolically, but I mean, it has to be taken into account that Hamanai wasn't a dictator as such. He was the main authority. He was the final decision-maker in Iran. He held the true reigns of power, but the kind of system that had involved under the decades of his supreme leadership was one in which a number of regime institutions have become

extremely powerful beneath him and around him. And as far as the regime is concerned, they will be

hoping that those can withstand this blow and that they will be able to get together a new leadership. I mean, at the moment, it's a three-person council that's in charge of what they'll be looking for a new supreme leader that that will hold steady that that will give the image both to the world and internally that it still stays strong. Sebastian Asha. Gaging the mood in Iran is difficult during these extraordinary times in the history of the Islamic Republic. The country is

under an almost total internet blackout and few Western journalists are allowed into Iran.

people have been killed and more than 700 injured in air strikes. State media has reported that strikes killed at least a 148 people at a school in southern Iran, including children, parents and teachers. The U.S. military says it's looking into these reports while the IDF of Israel says it was not aware of any operations in the area. It is clear in Iran, though, that the assassination of the supreme leader has convulsed the country in a way millions of Iranians

have never felt before. BBC Persian is monitoring developments and Casranajee told me more

about the public reaction. Iran is now officially in mourning. They've announced some 40 days of mourning and the week of closures of government offices and schools and universities and so on, but unofficially people are celebrating at home if not outside the home, but also with a lot of interpretation. Many people are very concerned as to what might happen next. Will this bring

“Iranians closer together or divide them further? The fact is that the regime has its supporters”

still and today a lot of them are out on the streets showing they are mourning and the Iranian

television is gathering their gatherings. The gatherings are now that big. I've seen the pictures

on the Iranian TV, only the place that I've seen a big number coming out is swamping in central Iran, traditionally religious sort of area, but nevertheless also we have videos of people celebrating in various parts of the country at homes, at night shouting slogans against the government. So there's quite a bit of divide, but Iranians are aware that the Americans and Israelis are planning for this to go on for a few days, for about five days or four days, according to reports that

we're getting from the American side. So I suppose people are waiting to see what happens, whether there will be space for them to come out and assure what they want and whether they can actually grab those levers of power that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu are calling on them to do. We had said that they're talking about this three-person council who will run the country until a new leader is chosen, but I can't you choose a new supreme leader when the country's

“under attack like this. I think Iran has gone through a lot of traumas of this type,”

so they are quite good at sort of trying to keep some semblance of normality and continuity. There are systems in place, like for example this three member council that they've just chosen is for a very short period of transition, then we have this council of experts assembly, made of very senior clergymen. They have to decide whether they want to collective leadership or a single leader. They will decide in the next few days.

Casoronaji from BBC Persian. So how long will the US and Israeli strikes go on in Iran? And do both nations have a long term plan for the future of Iran? Jonathan Conrikas is the former international spokesman for the Israeli Defense Forces or IDF, and now a senior fellow at the Washington think tank the foundation for defensive democracies? The US and Israel have plans

“in plural, not entirely sure that the plan is identical here. I think Israel would aspire”

for a more binary solution as in a real regime change and for the regime really to be completely dismantled and for all of the threats that Iranian regime has posed towards Israel that they were actually being taken off the table, whereas I believe that the US from its perspective perhaps has slightly more conservative goals and would suffice with no nuclear program and

perhaps no ballistic missiles. The X-factor here, the most important component with regards to the

future is the Iranian people. They are the ones who will eventually decide the outcome. Their actions will decide the fate of the regime and I think they've been absolutely tremendously brave so far standing up to the regime and what we're seeing now is that the US and Israel responded to that bravery, saw the opportunity and has given the Iranian people that help that they needed and from here on, as the Iranian regime will be degraded more and more in terms of military capabilities,

Iran initially responded to the Israel U.S. attack with a flurry of missile and drone strikes

“across the Middle East, killing at least two people in Abu Dhabi and another in Tel Aviv before”

following up with a new wave after state media confirmed Hamaynahi's death. Speaking at the scene of an Iranian retaliatory strike in Tel Aviv, Israel's president Isaac Herzog had this to say. We're here as to, with a message that people of Israel and the entire region states strong, this is a historic, historic effort to change the trajectory in the Middle East to a different future, a future of peace. We've been for generation confronted by an empire of evil,

Ali Hamane spent a whole generation of taking his people's resources and directing them towards their bloodshed, pain and horror. I spoke to the BBC's John Donasson, who's at the scene of that strike. I mean, front of an apartment block that has been completely flattened, it's in reduced to rubble, really, and that is where one of the Iranian ballistic missiles got through,

most of them are being shot down by Israel's air defense system, but it's here that we had the first

casualty in Israel of this war, a woman who we think was a Filipino care worker looking after someone in that building was killed and another number of other people have been injured and all morning the sirens have been going off here. I've heard loud explosions overhead just as we were driving to Tel Aviv. We saw a couple of Iranian missiles being shot down directly above our car. So, you know, the Iranians have said this is going to be the most devastating operation in their

history in retaliation and they do seem to be being true to their word. The Israeli's must have

had very good intelligence, incredible intelligence to target the Iranian leadership so precisely,

what have you heard? Well, they do, I mean, that's pretty obvious they have completely penetrated Iranian security, they have agents on the ground there, they have high-tech surveillance, but what struck me about this assassination was that the Iranians had led us to believe that the Supreme Leader had been taken out of Tel Aviv was in hiding, but it actually wasn't that hard to find him because he was in his office, he was in his compound. That's where he was killed in that initial wave of

strikes, but you're right, they took out dozens of other senior Iranian leaders, they seem to know

“exactly their movements, where they're going, where they are and the truth is that the Israeli”

is backed by the United States are just a vastly superior to the Iranians in terms of military capabilities but also in terms of intelligence. What do Israelis make of this? Do they welcome the attacks on Iran or are they worried about where this could go? Well, I think look, not just here in Israel, but across the Middle East, people are weary of war, we've just come out of two years of war in Gaza, a conflict that's not really gone away, we've had the war between his

bullet in Lebanon and Israel that was the year before last, so people are tired of it, but I do think speaking to people here in Tel Aviv on the ground, they kind of accept what Prime Minister Netanyahu says on this, they might disagree with him on lots of other things, but they do accept

“I think that for Israel Iran poses an existential threat and broadly I think people are behind”

the government on this one now, if this goes on for some time and we end up with more casualties in Israel, if we don't see the fall of the regime in Iran, opinion might change, but at the moment I think people are wary of this, but they probably back it, but it is going to have an impact, you know, schools are going to be closed this week, it's going to have an impact on the economy, there are no flights coming into Israel at all at the moment, so you know, as that impact increases

opinion could change, John Donison in Tel Aviv, still to come in this podcast, we take a look at the impact, the US and Israeli strikes and Iran's retaliation have had in Washington and across the Middle

East, what happens when a mandate becomes a breakthrough?

I'm Nishita Henry, special host of Resilient Edge, a business vitality podcast paid and presented by Deloitte. I sat down with two leaders who are redefining what enterprise transformation looks like, Jerry Hogerman from Deloitte and Sarah Ali Good from AWS took me behind the scenes

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All of that and more on this special episode of Resilient Edge, find us wherever you listen to podcasts. America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America? Isn't just a cause of global upheaval? It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Esma Khaled in Washington, DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the global story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.

Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Everything right now is a text story. From the gadgets that we buy it, so the way is that we communicate with each other to the ways that we work, to the ways that governments around the world are changing. All of it is mediated by technology. And on the verge cast, twice a week, we try to make sense of all of it. All of the news, all of the new stuff, all the biggest stories,

what it all means and how it makes us feel. On the verge cast, twice a week, wherever you find podcasts. This is the global news podcast. As we mentioned earlier, Iran has launched strikes across the Gulf. Many countries there host US military bases. The BBC's Barbara Plata's shirt is in

Qatar. I asked her how Iran's neighbors have reacted to these attacks. But first, she gave me

the latest on the Iranian strikes in the Qatari capital, Doha. It was quite a heavy round of explosions early this morning. And shortly after that, the interior ministry here said it was dealing with the limited fire in an industrial area that had been caused by debris from a missile that had been intercepted. So the Qataris, as well as the governments and the other Gulf nations say that they are mostly able to intercept these incoming missiles and drones, which continue into a second

day. Although there has been some damage and some casualties here in Qatar, there was a press conference around midnight when officials said that around eight people had been injured and then there had been various damage. And today you've had the port, a port, a birth of a port in Dubai. That was hit and fire broke out there. You've had the airport in Abu Dhabi as well as Bahrain targeted by drone strikes. The Omanis have said that their port was hit by two drones.

This is the first time they've been attacked. You remember that the Omanis have played

a long time role as a mediator between the Iranians and the Americans, but they are not being spared. Their port is also used as a military logistics hub. And that is what the Iranians say they are targeting. They are targeting US bases across the region. In fact, they said that they were pounding US military bases across the region this morning after the death of the IATOLA. So very much, the Gulf countries are on the front line of the response of Iran.

Could these Iranian attacks actually provoke a response from the Gulf states? Qatar and the United Arab Emirates yesterday put up very strongly worded statements in which they condemned these attacks as a violation of international law and of national sovereignty

“and they said they reserved the right to respond. I think you have to wait to see how the next”

days play out and whether the Gulf states feel that the level of attack is something that they simply can't accept and need to stand up to and also what is happening in Iran. It's all very fluid here at the moment. But what we do know is that this is the worst case, the like the nightmare for the Gulf states, which is an area of these stable prosperous economies that depend on oil exports and tourism and travel and a lot of the travel has been stocked, of course.

Arab Emirates said on ex that this was misguided to attack your neighbors. He says to Iran,

you're isolating yourself at a very critical moment and you're just confirming the story of

those who see you as the primary source of danger in the region. So come to your senses and deal with your neighbors with reason before the circle of isolation and escalation widens as he put it. Yeah, you mentioned the impact on trade and tourism if this continues. Not least, of course, the Straits of Hormuz, the impact of that could be huge. Yes, it could. I don't think that Iran has officially closed the straits. What we are hearing from shipping companies and also from Iranian

“press is that it is in effect closed that tankers are not going through and that I think”

of one of the reasons for that is they're not getting insurance to to cover their backs as they go through it. I mean, it's in a war zone. So the the de facto situation is that the shipping through the strait of Hormuz has slowed to almost a standstill and that is quite significant because 20% of the world's oil exports go through that region and the exports of Qatar and Saudi Arabia especially go through that area. So it has a significant impact. If that lasts for any length of time,

it's something that again that the Gulf states warned the Americans about. They were very clear with the Americans about what the risks were to the region if there was a military attack and they

are now seeing some of those warnings come true. Barbara Pletasha in Qatar. When he first ran for

President in 2016 Donald Trump condemned what he saw as American military adventurism in recent years declaring that regime change is a proven absolute failure. But now the US President has gone to war against Iran and maybe seeking regime change. Helena Humphrey is our correspondent in Washington. I asked her what President Trump's supporters will make of this operation after being promised an America first policy. It is a very important question to us because America first, as you say,

is what's so many voted for. They wanted to see an end to forever wars that was a promise from President Trump on the campaign trail. They're costly financially, of course, but also when it comes

to the potential for the loss of life. And remember in that social media video that Donald

Trump put out announcing all of this, he did warn that there could be American military casualties.

“He says that happens in war. So I think it's certainly a gamble ahead of the midterm elections,”

which are coming up in November. I think if he pulls off regime change, which he has stated as the aim here, he will tell that as strength, something that no United States leader has ever done before. But of course, it comes with huge risks. So what comes next in Iran could this drag the United States into something far bigger and far more dangerous? What does this mean for plans in Gaza and a permanent end to the war there? I mean, this is audacious to say the least. If you take a

look at the Google searches because you're asking, you know, what Americans make of this? What they're asking on Google is, why did we strike Iran? Did all of this go through Congress? They're also asking, you know, quite simply, are we at war? So I think it's fair to say this confusion here, there's anxiety. And we haven't heard from President Trump in an address on television, for example, something you might expect after an operation of this scale. So much of this is being

handled on social media from his resort in Marilago. Yeah, that question of dead Congress approved

“this is important, isn't it? What are the Democrats making of this? Well, I think it's fair to”

say, even if you have Democrats on the intelligence committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee, for example, saying, look, Iran is a threat. There's concern about the way in which this is being carried out, no congressional approval. I mean, we've heard that from Republicans as well, Thomas Massey saying that this is an unauthorised act of war. It didn't go through Congress. Now, Rokana, Democratic lawmaker, who's saying that he wants lawmakers to come to Washington this week,

to put their name on the record with regards to how they stand on this campaign. And what they'd wanted to do last week, the Democrats was force of war powers resolution. So force that vote, last week limiting the kind of strikes at the U.S. can carry out without authorization. That didn't come to pass. And now we've seen what has been unfolding over this weekend. Now, we also heard from Mark Warner, he is the Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. And what he was saying

was, show us the intelligence when it comes to the threat to Americans, you know, kind of arcning back to questions from Iraq, for example. But we know, in justification, Donald Trump, he marked back to 1979 in that eight-minute video. He said, look, Iran has long been a threat to

for over 400 days as his reasoning. Yeah, he mentioned Iraq, presumably the fear is that the chaos

that followed the Iraq war might be repeated. I mean, we're not there yet, but Donald Trump has been calling on Iranians themselves to rise up. He's been calling on the military to lay down their weapons. Essentially, he's saying do it yourselves. No boots on the ground from the U.S. side, but certainly we know that that will be extremely challenging. You've got elements of the

“regime, which are still there. And I think in the meantime, there's the question, will the U.S. end”

up embroiled in something which is far messier in the wider Middle East, not to mention the risks

that we know that can come with a power vacuum. You know, when you think Iraq as you say,

Libya, Syria. So if past is prologue, certainly this is a gamble from the U.S. President. Helena Humphrey in Washington. Regardless of the political fallout from the attacks on Iran, are they legally justified under international law? Faisal Al-Istrabadi is the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University in Bloomington in the U.S., it was also the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations just after the overthrow of that country's

former leader Sidam Hussain. On the one hand, Al-Ilamani as a supreme leader of Iran has the

“blood of tens upon tens of thousands of Iraqis on his hands, as well as the blood of Iranians,”

as well as the blood of other peoples of the Middle East. And so I am shedding no tears for his demise.

On the other hand, I happen also to be a lawyer and I teach international law. There can be no justification in international law for the actions taken by Israel and the United States. As I scan the reaction of the rule of law states, the West European states and Canada, I find that they are urging restraint upon Iran, which is indeed the entity that has been the state that has been attacked. Not upon those who have attacked it, without any legal justification,

I happen to hold a minority view in believing that the war in Iraq was legal, but that's a minority view and I know that. The majority view is that it was not that involved in a number of security council resolutions and in my view a reading of the Security Council resolutions gave justification for the United States and it's allies to resume hostilities in Iraq in particular after the Security Council unanimously passed resolution 1441, which said that Iraq was a material

breach of its disarmament obligations. So that was my view of the Iraq war. I'm in a minority. There is no legal justification for this anymore than Vladimir Putin has for Ukraine. My here is this, I wish the Iranian people well. Iran is a neighboring state of Iraq, Iraq shares its longest border with Iran. Chaos and Iran will be reflected in Iraq. There is something worse than tyranny and that is chaos. Iraq went through a period of tremendous chaos

after 2003. Chaos and Iran will be reflected inside Iraq. I do not wish the people of Iran chaos and I do not wish my own people of the Iraqis further chaos. I see absolutely no planning for what occurs now that harmony is dead. What is the American plan? I do not believe there is one. The Americans plan for almost a year for a post-Sadam Iraq and still got it wrong. This administration has not spent 24 hours in my view from what I understand planning for what comes next

and for Israel's Netanyahu chaos in Iran is a perfectly acceptable result. This is my fear.

“The Middle East does not need more chaos and my fear is that that's what we are on the verge of.”

I hope I'm mistaken. Faisal El-Istrabadi from the Centre for the Study of the Middle East at Indiana University in the US. To end the sedition of the global news podcast, I spoke to the BBC's Chief International correspondent Lee Stu set. She's been covering Iran for years and is one of the few western journalists who have been able to report from inside the country in recent months. I ask her how she views the next few days unfolding for Iran. Under the

Constitution, there is a three-person three-man leadership council which is now in place. The president, the head of the judiciary, hard-line president of the judiciary and a senior cleric from the Guardian Council, they will oversee the running of the Islamic Republic while the assembly of experts,

which drew in the United States, Ayatollah Ham and A, knowing that he was in the sites of Israel

“in America, his implacable enemies had said to the assembly of exures, draw up a list.”

So there is no, we don't know exactly who is on the list but it's believed that one of the Ayatollah Ham and A son, most about, is one of them. So a list is ready so we expect that in a few days time and once the assembly of experts is about 88 senior clerics carefully vet it in the same mold more or less as Ayatollah Ham and A, once they choose he will have all the authority and legitimacy

at least of that body. Now of course it comes at a time when the regime is under unprecedented

criticism at home and abroad there will be those who will be looking not just for cracks in the

“ruling order but also the collapse. So they are trying now to project stability and the seamless”

transition. The criticism after the Iraq war was that the Americans didn't have a plan to the Americans and the Israelis have a plan this time. Well, Israel has been preparing for this for for many, many years but for Israel, chaos is a good alternative. All they want is a weakened

Islamic Republic and that was the concern of many of the Arab leaders in the Gulf who said

to President Trump, don't attack Iran because you will unleash a war with unpredictable consequences for all of us across the region and could go all the way to the United States. Does President Trump have a day after given what we hear about how the state department with all his experts have been hollowed out given how we know the the negotiating team, even Steve Whitkov, Jared Kushner. They don't have the bandwidth or negotiating and Ukraine the

same time there. They were trying to negotiate in Gaza and many other and in on the Iranian file as well. The concern is no, they haven't looked at the day after and President Trump veers as we've seen in recent weeks. One day he talks about regime change the next day. He's talking about a nuclear deal. Even now, last night he was asked by CBS News about the future and he said, well, now this opens up a possibility for diplomacy. So he keeps everyone guessing and this

is not the time to leave everyone in most of all the people of Iran guessing. Please, you observed the region for a long time. You only just back from Iran. Are you optimistic or not? I think it's not a time for optimism or pessimism as a time just to keep an eye very closely on what happens not just day by day but hour by hour. This is a very unpredictable and a perilous moment. Not just for Iran, but the region and beyond.

“Please do set. And that's all for this special edition of the Global News Podcast. If you want to”

get in touch, you can email us at [email protected]. You can also find us on x@bbcworld service use the hashtag global news pod. This edition of the Global News Podcast was produced by Peter Goughin and Mickey Bristo. It was mixed by Nikola Braff and the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time, goodbye. America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America? Isn't just the

cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is the global story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.