DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran launched a new wave of attacks Thursday morning at Israeli and American bases and threatened that the United States would “bitterly regret” torpedoing an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean and a religious leader called for “Trump's blood,” while Israel said it had begun a “large-scale” attack on Tehran.

Israel announced multiple incoming missile attacks and air sirens sounded in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Iranian state television said additional strikes also targeted U.S. bases. The Israeli military said it launched targeted attacks in Lebanon at the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group a “large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure” in Iran’s capital, without elaborating. Explosions were heard in multiple locations in Tehran a short time later.

The U.S. Navy sank the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena Tuesday night in the Indian Ocean, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors, which Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi decried Thursday as “an atrocity at sea.”

“Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning,” he wrote on social media. “Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret (the) precedent it has set.”

Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli, in one of the few clerical statements so far from Iran, said the country was “on the verge of a great test” and called on state television for "the shedding of Zionist blood, the shedding of Trump’s blood.”

"Fight the oppressive America, his blood is on my shoulders,’” he said in a rare call for violence from an ayatollah, one of the highest ranks within the clergy of Shiite Islam.

The U.S. and Israel launched the war Saturday, targeting Iran’s leadership and killing Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as well as its missile arsenal and nuclear program. Leaders have suggested that toppling the government is a goal, but the exact aims and timelines have repeatedly shifted, signaling an open-ended conflict.

The war has killed more than 1,000 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. It has disrupted the supply of the world’s oil and gas, snarled international shipping and stranded hundreds of thousands of travelers in the Middle East.

Threats expanding across the Middle East

Countries around the region braced for potential dangers Thursday, a day after Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened “the complete destruction of the region’s military and economic infrastructure.”

Source: WPLG