Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Iranians woke up on March 1 to confirm that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – who ruled Iran for more than 36 years – was killed in US and Israeli strikes launched a day ago.
“I can’t believe it. It’s like when they give you such good news that you don’t even know what to do,” one person in the capital Tehran told BBC Persian.
A video clip shows teenagers at a school dancing and chanting that the strikes have happened, adding, “I love Trump.”
In the town of Galleh Dar in southern Iran, people knocked down a monument commemorating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic in 1979.
Others, however, fear that air strikes alone may not bring about the regime’s collapse. They worry it could survive and, in response, become even more brutal towards its own people.
Many Iranians reacted with anger after state media reported that an Israeli strike on a girls’ school killed dozens of people.
At a rally mourning Khamenei’s death in Tehran, one man said the news had filled him with hatred “towards Israel and America. We must avenge the blood of the leader.”
Some Iranians also grieved over the death of Khamenei. Atousa Mirzade, a primary school teacher, said she could not be happy about the country’s leader being killed by a foreign power.
Videos circulating on social media show people in Iran near the blast sites running in panic, with the sounds of screams and crying in the background.