Ayatollah Khamenei, who battled the US and Israel for decades as Iran’s supreme leader, has been killed
He was not on the list.
Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, who ruled Iran with an iron
fist as its supreme leader for nearly four decades, facing off against the US
and Israel while crushing dissent and advancing a controversial nuclear program
at home, has been killed, a seismic development that plunges his nation and the
region into uncharted territory.
Multiple Iranian state media outlets confirmed Khamenei’s
death on Sunday morning, hours after US and Israeli officials declared he had
been killed in their joint strikes targeting his regime.
One of the Middle East’s most powerful men, Khamenei
dominated Iran during a reign defined by resistance and resilience — standing
firm against decades of Western and Israeli pressure aimed at forcing the
Islamic Republic to bend to their will. Under his leadership, Iran expanded its
influence far beyond its borders, earning a reputation as a formidable and
dangerous regional power to be reckoned with.
But his death comes at a time when Iran is arguably at its
weakest since he took power in 1989. Decades of Western sanctions had already
left the country isolated and economically battered before American and Israeli
strikes in June 2025 dealt his rule a severe blow.
New attacks launched on February 28 specifically targeted
Khamenei and other top leaders, devastating his residence and offices in
Tehran.
“The Supreme Leader of Iran Has Reached Martyrdom,” state
broadcaster IRIB reported Sunday morning.
Khamenei was killed “in his office in the household of the
leader” while “carrying out his duties” at the time of the attack early on
Saturday, state media Fars News Agency reported.
Satellite images from Airbus showed black smoke rising from
the leader’s Tehran compound after the attack. The images appear to show that
several buildings in the compound were severely damaged by strikes.
The latest US-Israeli strikes followed the crushing of
Iranian anti-government protests that began in late December over economic
grievances but quickly turned political, spreading across all 31 of the
country’s provinces within weeks. The regime responded with a brutal crackdown,
killing thousands of protesters and prompting a global outcry and a threat of
intervention from US President Donald Trump.
That intervention came on Saturday, when Trump said the US
military was undertaking a “massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very
wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national
security interests.”
He also called on the Iranian people to “take over your
government,” adding that they now “have a president who is giving you what you
want, so let’s see how you respond.”
In the final years of Khamenei’s stubborn rule, the country
grew increasingly isolated, plagued by corruption and sinking deeper into
economic turmoil, with dwindling prospects for a swelling youth population and
shrinking middle class.
Khamenei’s supporters argue that he was pushed against the
wall for pursuing a foreign policy that defied the United States and Israel,
and that his death was the ultimate price he paid for that stance.
Under Khamenei’s leadership, Iran advanced a controversial
nuclear program that became the defining fault line between the Islamic
Republic and the West, and which he used as a bargaining chip to gain leverage
over adversaries.
He ruled a nation of 90 million people with a 2,500-year-old
civilization, maintaining an iron grip as he consolidated power.
Though surrounded by enemies, Khamenei long kept them at
bay. After he became his country’s top political and religious authority
following the death of the previous supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah
Khomeini, in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, Iran avoided major direct
attacks from its adversaries for more than three decades — even as other
regional foes of the United States and Israel fell one by one. The regime
entrenched itself with the formation of the “Axis of Resistance,” a loose
network of allied groups spread throughout the region that allowed Tehran to
project power at its enemies’ doorstep.
But all that — along with the aura of fear and intimidation
that Khamenei carefully cultivated — began to unravel in his final years. The
chain of events triggered by the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel by Hamas
shattered the image of Iran as an impenetrable and defiant regional power.
The axis started to crumble soon after the attacks. Israel
launched a devastating war on Hamas, then turned its sights on Hezbollah in
Lebanon, one of Iran’s most prized proxies. Israeli forces later moved into
Syria following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
Emboldened by a string of battlefield successes, Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “finish the job,” culminating in a
bold and unprecedented strike on Iran itself in June 2025, ostensibly to
dismantle its nuclear program and its ability to defend itself. The Israeli
strikes ultimately drew in the US, which struck three Iranian nuclear sites in
the final days of the war. Trump declared that the facilities had been
“obliterated.”
Six months after that 12-day war, Iran had lost most of its
bargaining chips with Israel and the West, including much of its nuclear
leverage and its regional proxies. The regime found itself embroiled in an even
deeper economic crisis, fueling mass public protests.
With few options remaining, the government reluctantly
returned to talks with the US but refused to budge on its demand to continue
enriching uranium, a fuel for nuclear power plants that can also be used to
build a bomb.
Iranian officials and an Omani mediator sounded optimistic
about a deal after the last round of talks on Thursday, with Omani Foreign
Minister Badr Albusaidi saying a deal was “within reach.” By Saturday morning,
the US and Israel had launched a surprise attack on Iran.
To his supporters, Khamenei was the steadfast, fearless
leader who transcended mere politics and inspired devotion. To his critics,
Iranian and foreign, he was a feared tyrant bent on crushing those opposed to
him while keeping his country isolated from the West.
He was only the second leader of the Islamic Republic and by
far the longest-serving. His rule shaped the regime’s national psyche, and his
death is likely to transform it profoundly.
Khamenei, who was born in 1939 in Mashhad, Iran’s holiest
city, became a Shiite Muslim cleric at a young age. He was an activist before
the 1979 Islamic Revolution, helping to organize protests against the shah of
Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and serving time in prison for it.
He was also a target for the new Islamic regime’s opponents
and escaped an assassination attempt in 1981 that left his right arm useless.
Not long afterward, he was elected president on a platform
deeply hostile to the West and its liberal ideology, and especially to the
United States — threatening a hard fight in the event of war.
“We in no way are willing to start an all-out war with the
US, but if it so happens, we will inevitably put up a very strong defense,” he
said.
He was a protégé of Khomeini, who led the struggle to
overthrow the shah and founded the Islamic Republic. When Khomeini died in
1989, Khamenei became his successor within a matter of weeks.
While lacking Khomeini’s theological standing, Khamenei
proved to be politically shrewd. Over time, he consolidated control over Iran’s
armed forces, intelligence services, judiciary and state media to ensure that
no major decision could be made without his approval.
The nuclear deterrence that backfired
It was Khamenei’s advancement of Iran’s nuclear program that
ultimately led to the attacks on Iran by Israel and the US.
Though he repeatedly claimed the program was for peaceful
purposes — and even issued a religious decree, or fatwa, proclaiming that
nuclear weapons were forbidden by Islam — he steadfastly supported the
development of nuclear energy as a matter of national sovereignty and strategic
leverage.
By the time Hassan Rouhani, a centrist politician, succeeded
hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2013, the nuclear showdown with
the West had turned into Iran’s biggest foreign policy challenge. With
Khamenei’s approval, Rouhani’s administration negotiated the 2015 nuclear deal
(known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) with world powers,
including the US. The deal was meant to free the Iranian economy from years of
crippling sanctions in return for limits on Iran’s nuclear program, notably its
enrichment of uranium.
But Khamenei remained skeptical. His reluctance to fully
embrace the deal contributed to its fragility. When Trump unilaterally exited
the agreement in 2018, Iran continued to abide by it. But a year later, Tehran
said it would no longer be bound by its commitments if the other parties to the
JCPOA were in breach of theirs.
Khamenei seized the moment to accelerate uranium enrichment
and leaned ever further into a “resistance economy” doctrine — emphasizing
self-sufficiency and confrontation over compromise.
In late June 2019, new US sanctions were imposed on Khamenei
himself, as well as his office, to block Iran’s access to the international
finance system. Trump’s punitive “maximum pressure” policy crippled Iran’s
economy and effectively denied its people the nuclear pact’s promised benefits.
The election of reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian in
2024 on a platform of reengaging with the world and resolving Iran’s nuclear
standoff brought hope of reinvigorating Iran’s economy and reintegrating the
Islamic Republic into the international community. Talks resumed with the US a
year later, but hopes of reaching a detente with the West were crushed by
Israel’s attack on Iran in the middle of those talks, as it sought to
capitalize on its military gains after the October 7 attacks.
Eight months later, Iran and the US began another round of
indirect talks, mediated by Oman. Despite engaging with Tehran, the Trump
administration started the biggest American military buildup in the Middle East
in over two decades. Trump sent mixed signals, saying talks had been going
well, while advocating regime change in Iran.
While Iran always denied any involvement in or prior
knowledge of the October 7 attacks by Hamas and allied militias, the assault
and the seismic regional events it triggered had major implications for a key
pillar of Khamenei’s legacy: a reliance on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard
Corps (IRGC) and proxy groups it supported to project power beyond Iran’s
borders.
Under Khamenei, Iran’s influence extended into Iraq after
Saddam Hussein’s ouster in 2003. In the following years, Tehran also became a
major player in regional conflicts, including Syria’s civil war, where IRGC
forces were at the forefront of operations.
The IRGC, which reported directly to Khamenei, became the
most powerful military institution in Iran, holding deep influence over
domestic politics and the economy. It also wielded huge influence over key
armed groups elsewhere in the region, such as Lebanon’s once formidable
Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and several armed Shiite groups
in Iraq and Syria. In 2019, the US added the IRGC to its list of designated
terrorist groups in an unprecedented move against another country’s armed forces.
In the 2010s, as the threat from the Islamic State (ISIS)
terrorist group grew, so did Iran’s involvement in neighboring Arab countries.
Many Shiite Muslims saw ISIS as an existential threat, and while Iranian-backed
militias had some success in pushing back the group, their campaigns also
deepened regional sectarian tensions.
Sunni Muslims often viewed the fight not just as a battle
against terrorism, but as an Iranian-led war on their sect. Powerful Arab
states in the Persian Gulf saw Iran’s moves as part of a broader effort to
expand a “Shiite Crescent” across the region, heightening fears of unrest at
home. By the mid-2010s, several Arab states in the gulf had severed diplomatic
ties with Tehran.
Khamenei didn’t back away, instead doubling down on support
for Iran’s proxies. ISIS was eventually crushed by a multinational coalition in
2019, and Iran’s regional influence solidified. A battered Syria turned into a
key staging ground for the IRGC, placing Iranian forces and allies right at
Israel’s doorstep. In time, Saudi Arabia restored ties with Iran through
secret, Chinese-brokered talks, and other gulf states soon followed. By then,
Iran had managed to improve relations with several neighbors. Despite crippling
sanctions, it appeared strategically ascendant — its regional reach more secure
than ever.
That strategic depth was dismantled bit by bit by Israel
after the October 7 attacks. With its proxies crippled, Iran became vulnerable
and finally itself became a target of both Israel and the US. After that 12-day
war in June, Tehran was left with little negotiating leverage, its nuclear
facilities heavily damaged, its proxies nearly neutralized and its economy in
tatters.
Opposition to reform
Iran saw repeated pushes for reform during Khamenei’s rule,
and repeated crackdowns on those efforts. He worked to contain the reformist
movement of President Mohammad Khatami in the late 1990s and backed the brutal
suppression of protests that erupted amid claims that the 2009 elections had
been rigged in favor of the hard-line Ahmadinejad.
Khamenei’s public backing of Ahmadinejad and the subsequent
crackdown cemented his image as a leader intolerant of dissent and reluctant to
change.
The 2021 election of Ebrahim Raisi as president marked the
culmination of Khamenei’s ideological ambitions: a political landscape
dominated by conservative and loyal forces with little room for dissent. Raisi
was even considered by some as the natural successor to Khamenei and his
worldview.
Under Raisi, Iranian security forces cracked down on
demonstrations sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who
died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being arrested for
allegedly violating the country’s mandatory hijab laws. The protests quickly
evolved into a nationwide uprising led largely by women and young people.
Once again, Khamenei used the full force of the state to
stifle calls for change, with hundreds killed and thousands arrested in the
crackdown. Raisi’s untimely death in a helicopter crash in 2024 provided
Khamenei with another opportunity to address public frustration, and many saw
the election of the reform-leaning Masoud Pezeshkian as a step in that
direction.
But Pezeshkian’s reformist agenda — and his hopes of
delivering a nuclear deal that could bring economic and social relief to his
people — were abruptly derailed by Israel’s attacks.
When protests erupted six months later, he acknowledged the
limits of his government’s ability to address the economic grievances that
fueled the demonstrations. For many Iranians, the president had failed to pull
the country out of isolation, failed to revive a nuclear deal and failed to
deliver the long-promised prosperity.
In late January, the US began a massive military buildup
around Iran while engaging in talks with Tehran via Omani mediation. Those
talks never formally collapsed, and all sides were signaling varying degrees of
progress just hours ahead of the attacks that ultimately led to Khamenei’s
death.
For Khamenei, it was a final reckoning. He had spent decades
warning that engagement with the West was pointless and that Iran’s enemies
would eventually strike. Even if the foundations he spent years building were
wiped away, for Iran’s hard-liners, he had finally been vindicated.
