Fatemeh Shams watched with bated breath as her native country came under military attack from the US and Israel over the weekend.

Living in the US since 2009, she is among Iranian-American exiles who have opposed the Tehran regime from afar, and so she does not mourn the death of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Saturday's bombing.

"We all have very mixed feelings about what's happening," Fatemeh, based in Philadelphia, told the BBC. "On the one hand, we are extremely happy that our killers... they no longer breathe.

"The fact that [Khamenei] was killed in less than a moment, after 38 years of corruption and crime, it kind of feels that we didn't have any control over the justice we had been fighting for."

She is not the only member of the Iranian diaspora in America with mixed feelings. Some expressed concerns about the death toll and how long the conflict might last.

But many rallied across the US to celebrate Khamenei's death, in cities from Boston to Washington DC and Los Angeles.

On Sunday in LA - a city sometimes dubbed Tehrangeles as it is home to more than a third of the 400,000 Iranian immigrants in the US - police closed streets outside a federal building so demonstrators could celebrate.

The Iranian-American crowd waved flags while a plane circled in the sky above, trailing a banner that said, "THANK U TRUMP".

Hoda Zeaighamnia danced in the streets with her three children - one of whom was just days old when the family fled Iran.

Her daughter, Donya Cheshmaghil, told the BBC: "I was born in Iran. My family was forced to flee because we're not Muslim and they're very oppressive against anyone that's not Muslim.

"We're hoping this leads to regime change. We're very grateful for the US for finally intervening. The people in Iran have been asking for this. This is what the people in Iran want."

Her sister, Mona Cheshmhehil, said: "I'm sorry that it just had to take so many lives being lost for this to happen, but right now all we can think about is we're just so happy to have the chance to go back, see where we came from.

"We couldn't have thought this would happen."

However, a day earlier outside LA city hall, there was anger.

Actress Jane Fonda was among a few hundred who gathered to protest.

"You may wage this war in our name, but not with our consent," Fonda, 88, a longstanding anti-war activist, shouted to the crowd.

In other US cities, demonstrators for and against the military action made their voices heard.

"We don't call it a war," Sherry Yadegari, of Atlanta, Georgia, told AFP news agency. "We call it the Iran Rescue Operation."

But at a protest in New York, Layan Fuleihan, an activist, told AFP: "Bombing people does not help them free themselves.

"If Trump cared about democracy or if he cared about the well-being of Iranian people, he would have lifted the brutal sanctions on the Iranian economy that have made it impossible for everyday working Iranians to find enough to put food on their table."

Divisions were laid bare, too, among US Congress members with Iranian heritage.

Congresswoman Stephanie Bice, an Oklahoma Republican whose father is half-Iranian, posted on X: "Now is the time for Iranians to stand up and take back their nation and bring lasting peace to the Middle East."

But Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat whose parents fled the 1979 Iranian Revolution to come to the US, expressed some misgivings.

She said in a statement she wanted a free Iran, but did not want the US embroiled in "another endless war in the Middle East".

Back on the streets, many Iranian-Americans were prepared to set aside questions about what comes next and enjoy the downfall of an ayatollah whose regime killed thousands of people this year to crush widespread protests.

"This is a great day," Meraa Tcheshmaghio, told the BBC at LA's protest on Sunday. "Our country has been wanting this for a while.

"It's beautiful. It really is."