A large crowd gathered outside of Sheffield City Hall on Sunday to continue celebrations after the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Following the joint US and Israeli assassination of Iran’s supreme leader, Sheffield Iranians have been gathering outside City Hall to celebrate since.

One participant said: “ We are gathering together almost every week on Sundays, in solidarity with the Iranian people.

“After the revolution started in Iran, we are carrying it abroad, so we are Iranian in exile, technically.”

Ali Khamenei’s death ends a four decade tenure as Iran’s supreme leader, wielding total control over the state and its military.

Neenee Kaorsand, one of the protestors, said: “Around 1979, some sort of revolution happened in my country, and extremists took over Iran, and it’s been 47 years of them killing people.

“We are not pro-war, we don’t like war, but imagine when people are in front of the government, when they kill their own people, and you are a normal civilian with no weapons or anything, how would you resist?”

Mojtaba Khamenei will become the third supreme leader of Iran, filling the power void left after his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

Another demonstrator said: “The US and Israel bombed the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], and they killed the supreme leader, and that’s a big step towards people’s freedom.”

“You have to realise, that these protests at first were the only community we had, because the Iranian government shut down the internet, so we couldn’t talk to family members back home, we couldn’t message, call, see what’s up, and so people gathered to sort of hear what’s going on back home.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran ended the country’s monarchical rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979. Since then, the Republic has enforced strict Islamic codes of dress and behaviours onto the public, as well as conservative values.

Ms Kaorsand said: “Women had to go, they had rules and regulations with the hijab and everything, so you have no choice, any other religion they cannot practice whatsoever.”

As of writing, the Iranian Health Ministry has stated that more than 12,000 people have been wounded from the strikes, with 1,255 killed in the previous nine days.