Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has been assassinated in a massive US and Israeli attack.
Iranian state television confirmed Khamenei’s death early Sunday, hours after President Trump announced the killing of the 86-year-old cleric he described as “one of the most evil people in History.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards vowed “severe, decisive” punishment for Khamenei’s “murderers” in a statement. The Guards added they would launch the “most ferocious” operation in history against Israel and US bases, which are located in Gulf countries that are already counting the cost of an unprecedented series of deadly Iranian strikes.
“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” Trump said in a statement.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu similarly said to Iranians, “This is your time to join forces, to overthrow the regime and to secure your future.”
Iran responded to the 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 as explosions rocked the showcase cities of Gulf Arab monarchies.
The Israeli army said that Ali Shamkhani, a top advisor to Khamenei and the head of Iran’s powerful Revolutionary Guards, and General Mohammad Pakpour were also killed.
Along with Khamenei, Iranian media said that his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter were killed.
One prominent survivor, Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, vowed defiance.
“The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will teach an unforgettable lesson to the international oppressors,” he said.
Aged 86, Khamenei dominated Iran since taking on the post for life in 1989 following the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
He remained in power after overcoming 1999 student demonstrations, 2009 mass protests sparked by disputed presidential elections, and 2019 demonstrations that were brutally suppressed.
He also survived the 2022-2023 “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement sparked by the death in custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, who had been arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.
Khamenei was forced to go into hiding during the 12-day war against Israel in June, which exposed deep Israeli intelligence penetration of the Islamic Republic that led to the killing of key security officials in air strikes.
But he survived that war and, after nationwide protests again shook Iran earlier this year, he emerged defiant as ever.
Khamenei lived under the tightest security, and his relatively infrequent public appearances were never announced in advance or broadcast live.
As supreme leader, he never set foot outside the country, a precedent set by his predecessor Khomeini following his triumphant return to Tehran from France in 1979.
Khamenei’s last known foreign trip was an official visit to North Korea in 1989 as president, where he met Kim Il Sung.
There had long been speculation about his health, given his age, but nothing in his most recent appearance fuelled any new rumours. Khamenei’s right arm was partially paralysed following an assassination attempt in 1981 that authorities have always blamed on the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) group, one-time allies of the revolution now outlawed in the country.
Repeatedly arrested under the Shah for his anti-imperial activism, Khamenei, shortly after the Islamic revolution, became the Friday prayer leader of Tehran and also served on the front line during the Iran-Iraq war.
He was elected president in 1981 following the assassination of Mohammad Ali Rajai, another attack blamed on the MEK.
During the 1980s, Khomeini’s most likely successor was seen as the senior cleric Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, but the revolutionary leader changed his mind shortly before his death after Montazeri objected to the mass executions of MEK members and other dissidents.
When Khomeini died, and the Islamic Republic’s top clerical body — the Assembly of Experts — met, it was Khamenei they chose as leader.
Khamenei famously initially rejected the nomination, putting his head in his hands in a show of despair and declaring, “I am opposed”. But the clerics stood in unison to seal his nomination, and his grip on power never slackened.
Khamenei worked with six elected presidents, a far less powerful position than the supreme leader, including more moderate figures such as Mohammad Khatami, who were allowed to make tentative reforms and pursue cautious rapprochement with the West.
But in the end, Khamenei always came down on the side of hardliners.
He was believed to have six children, although only one, Mojtaba, gained public prominence. He was placed under US sanctions in 2019 and is one of the most powerful backstage figures in Iran.
A family dispute also caught attention: his sister Badri fell out with her family in the 1980s and fled to Iraq in the war to join her husband, a dissident cleric.
Some of their children, including a nephew who is now in France, became vehement critics.
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.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late pro-Western shah deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution, warned that any successor within the system would be illegitimate.
Hailing the reported demise of Khamenei, only the second supreme leader of the cleric-run 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 all the opposition.
Iran’s Red Crescent society said that at least 201 people had been killed in the strikes and more than 700 wounded.
The Iranian judiciary said one strike that hit a school in the south killed 108 people, although AFP was unable to access the site to verify the toll or the circumstances surrounding the incident.
Meanwhile in Israel, city streets stood deserted as residents took cover in shelters while the blasts of intercepted Iranian missiles reverberated overhead.
Israeli emergency services said that an Iranian missile strike killed a woman in the Tel Aviv area and that some 20 others were wounded.
Residents and AFP correspondents in the Emirati, Qatari and Bahraini capitals heard multiple rounds of explosions from Iran’s retaliatory strikes.
Smoke poured from US bases in the UAE and Bahrain, home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.
“When we heard the sounds, we cried out of fear,” said Jana Hassan, a 15-year-old student who was near the strike in Bahrain.
In Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s capital, two people were killed, while smoke and flames rose from Dubai’s famed man-made island, The Palm, with four people reported injured.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards contacted ships to announce the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway for oil from the Gulf, although it was unclear whether the threat was being enforced.
Tehran residents had been going about their usual business when the strikes first began. Security forces quickly flooded the streets, shops pulled down their shutters, and few pedestrians risked venturing out, an AFP journalist saw.
“I saw with my own eyes two Tomahawk missiles flying horizontally toward targets,” a Tehran office worker told AFP before communications and internet access were cut.
It was the first US military action of this scale, apparently aimed at toppling a foreign government since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Israel’s army chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said the operation was “taking place at a completely different scale” than the 12-day war it fought against Iran in June, which the US briefly joined.
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.
Oman had been mediating and had on Friday reported what it called a breakthrough, with Iran said to agree not to stockpile any uranium.
Oman called for an immediate ceasefire on Saturday. Iran also called on the UN Security Council, which held an emergency session Saturday, and where the United States holds veto power, to act to stop the attack.
© Agence France-Presse
