PALM BEACH, United States — President Donald Trump said Sunday that 48 Iranian leaders have been killed in the ongoing US-Israeli bombardments of the country.

 

"Nobody can believe the success we're having, 48 leaders are gone in one shot. And it's moving along rapidly," Trump was quoted as saying in an interview by Fox News.

 

US forces struck and sank an Iranian warship in the offensive against the Islamic republic, the US military said Sunday, calling on members of Iran's armed forces to "lay down your weapons."

 

"An Iranian Jamaran-class corvette was struck by US forces during the start of Operation Epic Fury. The ship is currently sinking to the bottom of the Gulf of Oman at a Chah Bahar pier," US Central Command posted on X.

 

Meanwhile, the Pentagon on Sunday denied Iran's claim to have struck the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles in the Gulf.

 

"The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn't even come close," US Central Command said on X.

 

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said that they had attacked USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf after US and Israeli strikes killed the country's supreme leader.

 

"The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was struck by four ballistic missiles," the Guards said in a statement carried by local media, warning that the "the land and sea will increasingly become the graveyard of the terrorist aggressors".

 

Two ships were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz on Sunday, maritime security agencies said, as Iran pressed a second day of strikes in response to US-Israeli air raids.

 

One ship, off the coast of Oman, was "struck by an unknown projectile above the waterline. Although the engine room was originally reported as on fire it has now been reported that the fire is under control," the British maritime security agency UKMTO said in a statement.

 

In a separate incident, another vessel was "struck by an unknown projectile causing a fire. The fire has been extinguished and the vessel intends to continue on its voyage," UKMTO said.

 

The private maritime security company Vanguard Tech indicated that the second vessel, a tanker, was located approximately 17 nautical miles northwest of Mina Saqr in the United Arab Emirates.

 

On Sunday, Iranian state television said an oil tanker was "sinking" after being struck while transiting the Strait of Hormuz.

 

"The fate of the offending oil tanker that was struck while attempting to illegally pass through the Strait of Hormuz is that it is now sinking," state TV reported, without elaborating.

 

Images broadcast by the television station showed thick black smoke billowing from the burning tanker.

 

The strait is a key transit point for the global oil trade, through which a quarter of the world's oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas pass.

 

On Saturday, Iran's Revolutionary Guards closed the shipping lane, warning that it was dangerous due to US and Israeli attacks.

 

A top Iranian official on Sunday rejected President Donald Trump's warning not to retaliate against massive US-Israel bombardments, saying there would be "no limit" to the country's self-defense.

 

"Nobody can tell us that you don't have any right to defend yourselves. We are defending ourselves whatever it takes, and we see no limit for ourselves to defend our people, to protect our people," Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told ABC News.

 

"What the United States is doing is an act of aggression. What we are doing is the act of self-defense. There are huge differences between these two," he said.

 

Iran began 40 days of mourning on Sunday for its slain supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and declared a new wave of strikes on US bases in the Gulf, despite Trump threatening an unprecedented escalation in force.

 

Even as crowds gathered in Tehran, explosions rang out and the Israeli military announced that it was again striking targets in the heart of the city.

 

Despite the US leader's stark warning, more explosions were heard in Jerusalem, Dubai, Doha and Manama as Israeli and Gulf air defence systems battled a renewed wave of Iranian missiles and drones.

 

Iran's first retaliatory strikes on Saturday had hit all the Gulf states apart from Oman, which had tried to be a mediator in US-Iran talks, but on Sunday the country's commercial port of Duqm was hit by two drones, injuring a foreign worker, the Oman News Agency said.

 

Outrage at Saturday's wave of US and Israel strikes against Iran, which killed 86-year-old Khamanei and some other senior figures, also spilled over into neighbouring Iraq and Pakistan, where crowds attempted to storm US diplomatic facilities.

 

Iran initially responded to the Israel-US 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 Khamenei's death.

 

Question on succession

 

Iran had already seen intense speculation on a successor to Khamenei, given his age. Upon his death, many observers expected greater power for the Revolutionary Guards, which are deeply entrenched in the Iranian economy.

 

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and two other top officials would lead Iran in the transitional period following Khamenei's death, state television reported on Sunday.

 

Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late pro-Western shah deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution, said that any successor within the system would be illegitimate.

 

Hailing the demise of Khamenei, only the second supreme leader of the state after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Pahlavi said, "With his death, the Islamic Republic has effectively come to an end and will soon be consigned to the dustbin of history."

 

Pahlavi, who has spent most of his life in exile near Washington, has presented himself as a transitional figure to a secular democracy, but he does not enjoy support from across the opposition.

 

Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, the UAE and Israel all closed their airspaces to civilian traffic, at least in part, and multiple airlines cancelled flights to the Middle East.

 

Trump's envoys had negotiated in Geneva on Thursday with Iran's foreign minister.

 

Trump said that Iran's leaders had not compromised sufficiently on its disputed nuclear programme, although he made clear after the attack that the goal was regime change and not a nuclear deal.