The United States hit hundreds of targets across Iran, and Israel expanded its bombing to Lebanon on Monday as President Donald Trump vowed to avenge the first US deaths in the war he launched to topple Tehran's ruling clerics. Iranian forces fired missiles and drones across the Middle East, killing people in Israel and the United Arab Emirates, in retaliation for the conflict that began Saturday with the matryradom of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The US military expanded targets across Iran on Sunday and said it destroyed the headquarters of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the elite unit tasked with preserving the theocracy in place since 1979. "The IRGC no longer has a headquarters," US Central Command said in a statement. The Israeli military said it was carrying out "large-scale strikes" in the heart of Tehran on Monday and also bombing across Lebanon against Hezbollah, the armed Shiite Muslim movement closely tied to Iran's Islamic republic.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have urged the overthrow of the government in Iran, the sworn foe of Israel and the United States since the 1979 Islamic revolution toppled the pro-Western shah. Trump, speaking to the New York Times, said the United States and Israel could keep up the level of attacks for four to five weeks. "It won't be difficult. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition," he said, adding he had a shortlist of three unnamed people he favoured to lead Iran after the war.

In a video address, Trump urged Iranian security forces "to lay down your arms and receive full immunity or face certain death." "It will be certain death," he repeated. "It won't be pretty." 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." "But America will avenge their deaths and deliver the most punishing blow to the terrorists who have waged war against, basically, civilization."

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 soldiers' deaths were the result of a "reckless decision" and that there was no threat to "justify this type of pre-emptive military strikes."

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)