Khamenei Killed On His ‘Compound’ In Israeli-US Strikes, Confirms Iran

Tehran, March 1: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed, Iran’s state media confirmed, after the United States and Israel launched the most ambitious attack on Iranian targets in decades. It comes after the US and Israel said Khamenei was killed following a barrage of joint US-Israeli strikes on Tehran.

“The Supreme Leader of Iran Has Reached Martyrdom,” state broadcaster IRIB reported on Sunday morning.

Media reports said the 86-year-old leader was killed in his office in the early hours of Saturday. His death at his office “showed that he consistently stood among the people and at the forefront of his responsibilities, confronting what officials call global arrogance”, state TV said.

Earlier, quoting an Israeli official, Times Of Israel reported the Iranian leader had been killed in an Israeli strike on his compound on Saturday morning, and a senior Israeli official said that his body had been found.

Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been shown an image of his body after it was recovered from the compound in Tehran.

The assassination of the second leader of the Islamic Republic, who had no designated successor, could throw Tehran’s future into doubt and raise the prospect of a protracted conflict, given Iranian threats of retaliation.

Trump Announced Khamenei’s Death

Trump, in a post on X, said the death of the 86-year-old Iranian leader is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The death occurred after a joint US and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites.

The American commander-in-chief said the United States worked closely with Israel to target the man who had led Iran since 1989.

Soon after Trump’s post, the Iranian Supreme Leader’s X account posted a cryptic message raising doubts about Trump’s claim. The post, written in Persian, read: “In the name of Nami Haider (peace be upon him).”

How US Tracked Khamenei

Trump, making the biggest foreign-policy gamble of his presidency after campaigning for re-election as a “peace president,” said the US-Israel joint operation against Iran was aimed at ending a decades-long threat from Iran and ensuring it could not develop a nuclear weapon.

Intelligence and tracking systems monitored Khamenei’s whereabouts, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post, adding that “there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

The US leader reiterated calls for Iranians to topple the government but warned: “The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Khamenei’s compound had been destroyed.

Other Top Iranians Leaders Killed

Three sources familiar with the matter told news agency Reuters that Iranian Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards commander Mohammed Pakpour were among those killed in the attacks.

Israel’s military said it had confirmed that five other senior military commanders were also dead, including Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader. Iranian media had said Khamenei’s daughter, grandchild, son-in-law and daughter-in-law were also killed.

Iran has called the strikes unprovoked and illegal and responded with missiles fired at Israel and at least seven other countries, including Gulf states that host US bases.

About Khamenei

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has ruled Iran since 1989. As Supreme Leader, he holds ultimate authority over all branches of government, the military and the judiciary in the Shia Islamic republic.

At first dismissed as weak and indecisive, Khamenei seemed an unlikely choice for supreme leader after the death of the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran. But Khamenei’s rise to the pinnacle of the country’s power structure afforded him a tight grip over the nation’s affairs.

Khamenei was “an accident of history” who went from “a weak president to an initially weak supreme leader to one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years”, Karim Sadjadpour at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace told Reuters.

The ayatollah criticised Washington throughout his rule, continuing to deploy barbs after the start of Donald Trump’s second term as US president in 2025.

As a new wave of protests spread through Iran, with slogans such as “Death to the dictator”, and as Trump threatened to intervene, Khamenei vowed in January that the country would not “yield to the enemy”.

The comment was typical of the ferociously anti-Western Khamenei, in office since 1989.

By maintaining the hardline stance of Khomeini, the Republic’s first supreme leader, Khamenei quashed the ambitions of a succession of independent-minded elected presidents who sought more open policies at home and abroad.

In the process, he ensured Iran’s isolation, critics say.