.jpeg?trim=349,0,350,0&width=1200&height=800&crop=1200:800 "Ayatollah calls for Trump’s blood in revenge for sunken warship: ‘The US will bitterly regret this’ – UK Times")
A senior Iranian cleric has called for the “shedding of Trump’s blood” in revenge for a US submarine attack that sunk an Iranian warship, as chaos engulfed the Middle East for a sixth day.
In a rare statement, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli said Washington would “bitterly regret” torpedoing the IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday in an attack that killed at least 87 people and injured dozens of others.
Violence continued to spread beyond the Middle East on Thursday as Iranian drones hit an airport and school in Azerbaijan, which vowed to crush Tehran “with an iron fist” in response. The country has since closed its airspace for 12 hours. Tehran, with whom the country shares a 689km border, denied it was behind the attack.
Iran launched a new wave of attacks at Israeli and American bases, while residents in Tehran reported some of the most intense bombing of the war so far.
Ayatollah Amoli said the attack on the warship in Sri Lankan waters showed that Iran was “on the verge of a great test”.
Appearing on state television, he called for “the shedding of Zionist blood” and “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.
“Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”
In the aftermath of the attack, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth boasted that the “Iranian navy rests at the bottom of the Persian Gulf” and said it was the first time a torpedo had sunk an enemy vessel since World War II.
In the days since President Donald Trump announced Operation Epic Fury, attacks have spread far beyond Iran with strikes hitting American allies in the Gulf, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman. Turkey, Azerbaijan and Cyprus have also been impacted by drone attacks.
A Sri Lankan cabinet spokesperson said on Thursday they were trying to “safeguard lives” on a second Iranian ship that had entered its territorial waters.
The Israeli military said it launched targeted attacks in Lebanon on the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group and announced a “large-scale wave of strikes against infrastructure” in Iran’s capital, without elaborating.
At least 38,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria in the wake of new fighting between Hezbollah and Israel, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR). Around 84,000 people have been internally displaced within Lebanon, UNHCR and Lebanese officials said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Iranian forces claimed to have set fire to a US tanker in the northern part of the Gulf in a strike, amid deepening concern over the fate of vessels crossing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Revolutionary Guards warned that any vessel passing through the Strait would be under Tehran’s control while the war continues, a development that threatens to disrupt the global supply of oil and cause chaos in energy markets.
The US has not commented on the reports of an attack.
Earlier, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said a tanker anchored off Kuwait was hit by a “large explosion”. The vessel was taking on water and oil was seen leaking from a cargo tank. It is unclear whether they were referring to the same vessel as the IRGC.
The war has blocked access to major ports in the Gulf region, affecting the supply of food to more than 50 million people in a region highly dependent on agricultural imports, a ship-spotting platform said on Thursday.
MarineTraffic.com said that container vessels heading to ports in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Kuwait are now stranded.
The war has killed more than 1,230 people in Iran, more than 70 in Lebanon and around a dozen in Israel, according to officials in those countries. Iranian strikes on American military installations in the Gulf caused the deaths of at least six US soldiers.
US Central Command claimed to have sunk more than 20 regime vessels “with overwhelming firepower from air, land, and sea” on Thursday.
They added that US forces had reduced Iranian regime drone launches by 73 per cent and ballistic missile launches by 86 per cent over a four-day period.
