Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in American-Israeli strikes on Saturday morning, Iranian state media confirmed early Sunday morning, hours after US President Donald Trump declared the 86-year-old’s death in the most ambitious attack on Iran in decades.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that US strikes would continue “uninterrupted” for the coming week or until peace is secured in Iran.
Israeli and US officials had increasingly projected confidence in the hours leading up to Trump’s remarks that the leader of the Islamic Republic had been killed in an airstrike on his compound.
Earlier, before the confirmation of the leader’s death, a tweet had been posted from the supreme leader’s X account, purporting to show that he was still alive, and regime-affiliated media outlets had denied he was killed.
Trump wrote on social media that Khamenei’s death was “not only justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans, and those people from many countries throughout the world [who] have been killed or mutilated by [him] and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.”
Netanyahu, in a video address to the public on Saturday night, said there were growing signs that Khamenei “is no more,” but did not openly declare him dead.
This morning, in a powerful surprise strike, the compound of the tyrant Ali Khamenei was destroyed in the heart of Tehran… and there are many signs that this tyrant is no longer alive,” the premier said.
Cheers could be heard on Tehran’s streets after reports of the death, according to witnesses.
A Fox News reporter, citing an unnamed US official, said Washington believed Khamenei and five to 10 other top Iranian officials were killed in the initial Israeli strike of the operation, dubbed “Operation Roaring Lion” by Israel and “Operation Epic Fury” by the US.
Israel, having coordinated with the US, dropped some 30 bombs on Khamenei’s compound in the opening minutes of the assault, according to an unsourced Channel 12 news report. The same report claimed that the Iranian leader was underground at the location, but not in one of the two deepest bunkers that only US bombs could have penetrated.
Satellite imagery has shown the compound largely destroyed.
Two Iranian sources told Reuters that Khamenei had met with Shamkhani and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani at a secure location shortly before the strikes started.
Iran responded to the Israeli and US strikes by firing dozens of ballistic missile barrages at Israel and the Gulf states, which are close allies of the US and host its military bases.
As of Saturday night, two people had been confirmed dead in the strikes, including a woman in her 40s who was fatally wounded in a ballistic missile impact in Tel Aviv. The other confirmed casualty was a foreign worker in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital.
While Israel was reportedly behind the specific strike that took out Khamenei, Trump indicated that the US played a major role, while coordinating with Jerusalem.
Khamenei “was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders [who] have been killed along with him, could do,” Trump bragged.
“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country. We are hearing that many of their [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], military, and other security and police forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for immunity from us,” the US president added.
Such capitulations have not been verified.
Trump has called on Iranian security personnel to surrender in exchange for immunity or face imminent death.
“Hopefully, the IRGC and police will peacefully merge with the Iranian patriots and work together as a unit to bring back the country to the greatness it deserves,” Trump posted on Saturday. “That process should soon be starting in that, not only the death of Khamenei but the country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated.”
“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!” the president concluded.
‘Years to recover’
It would take Iran “several years” to recover from the pummeling it received from the US and Israel, Trump said on Saturday evening, in a phone conversation with reporter Barak Ravid from Israel’s Channel 12 news.
The president said he could choose to make the campaign as long as he likes or finish within a matter of days, but warned that he would attack again if Iran attempted to rebuild.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs],” Trump said in the five-minute phone interview from Mar-a-Lago with Ravid, who published the English quotes on Axios.
However, he stressed that “in any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack.”
Netanyahu urges Iranians to rise up
Netanyahu, in his televised statement, said that Israel had eliminated commanders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, senior regime officials, and senior nuclear officials since Saturday morning, and that it would “hit thousands of targets of the terror regime” in the coming days.
The operation against Iran “will continue as long as is necessary,” the premier said, “and stamina is necessary.”
Vowing that the operation would lead to “true peace,” Netanyahu said Israel would create the conditions for the Iranian people to “free itself from the chains of dictatorship.”
He called on the Iranian people to unite and rise up against the regime, urging them in the Hebrew-language video not to forego the “once-in-a-generation” opportunity.”
“Soon your moment will come,” he said, “the moment when you must take to the streets in your masses, to take to the streets to complete the work to bring down the regime of horrors that embitters your lives.”
“Help has arrived,” he added in English.
The Israeli strikes on Iran continued into the night, with the Israeli Air Force confirming shortly after midnight that it had completed another wave of strikes targeting Iran’s ballistic missile launchers and air defense systems.
According to the IDF, the missile launchers and air defenses were struck in western and central Iran. The military also said it “attacked several launch sites in central Iran that had not yet been targeted.”
One of the targeted missile launch sites, in the Qom area, was utilized by Iran to store “H-1” Ghadr missiles, capable of carrying warheads with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, the military said.
The IDF said the strikes on the launchers and other infrastructure at the sites “thwarted dozens of launches toward the territory of the State of Israel and dealt a severe blow to the regime’s most central offensive capability.”
Top Iranian officials killed
Elaborating on Netanyahu’s remarks on the deaths of some of the top gatekeepers of the Iranian regime, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed the identities of several members of Iran’s security leadership killed since Saturday morning. Among the names were top defense official Ali Shamkhani and the commander of the IRGC, Mohammad Pakpour.
Iranian media had said Khamenei’s son-in-law and daughter-in-law were also killed.
The IDF said it could confirm the deaths of the following officials in the strikes:
- Ali Shamkhani, a former IRGC Navy chief and Iranian army chief, and a top adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Israel targeted him in last June’s war, and initially believed it had killed him.
- Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the IRGC. The IDF says Pakpour led Iran’s “plan to destroy Israel,” and he was responsible for missile and drone attacks on Israel, supporting Iran’s proxy groups, and ” effectively commanded the violent suppression of Iranian protesters during the internal protests last month.”
- Salah Asadi, the chief of intelligence in Iran’s military emergency headquarters, and the senior intelligence officer of Iran’s armed forces’ general staff. The IDF says he was also involved in Iran’s “plan to destroy Israel.”
- Mohammad Shirazi, the chief of Khamenei’s military bureau since 1989. The IDF says he was responsible for “the liaison between the senior commanders of the armed forces and the leader, and was a central figure in the top ranks of the Iranian terror regime.”
- Aziz Nasirzadeh, Iran’s minister of defense, and a former chief of the Iranian air force and deputy chief of staff. The IDF says he was responsible for “industries producing long-range missiles and weapons transferred to regime proxies, as well as for the SPND organization, which advanced projects in the fields of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.”
- Hossein Jabal-Amelian, chairman of SPND. The IDF says he was responsible for “developing advanced technologies and weapons for the regime” and advanced “projects for years in the fields of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.”
- Reza Mozafari-Nia, a former chairman of SPND. The IDF says he “advanced efforts to develop nuclear weapons.”
‘Hellish international oppressors’
Meanwhile, Khamenei’s top aide Ali Larijani, whom Channel 12 said had been among those targeted in the US and Israeli strikes, took to social media to vow revenge against Israel and the US for the heavy losses.
“We will make the Zionist criminals and the shameless Americans regret their actions. The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hellish international oppressors,” Larijani wrote on X.
Khamenei had reportedly put in place detailed plans for his succession and emergency chains of command should he, or other top leaders, be killed in potential US or Israeli strikes, elevating longtime loyalist Larijani to manage the crisis.
Iran’s clerical leaders were already facing furious domestic opposition, marked by mass anti-government demonstrations in January. The regime cracked down on the protests, killing thousands, if not tens of thousands of Iranians, in the worst domestic unrest since the era of the 1979 revolution.
Protesters had again taken to the streets in recent days in remembrance of those killed the previous month.
Tehran residents had been going about their usual business on Saturday when the strikes 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.
The Red Crescent said 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces were affected by the strikes and listed the number of dead as over 200, with more than 700 said injured.
Within the first 12 hours of the operation in Iran, the US military carried out nearly 900 strikes across Iran, according to an unnamed US official cited by Fox News.
The strikes were launched from the land, air and sea and included drones all while defending against hundreds of incoming Iranian ballistic missiles the US official said.
The official said that Iran had fired about 300 missiles in the same period. Many of the missiles were aimed at Israel, but explosions also shook the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.
The official claimed, however, that Iran struck “empty warehouses” in strikes that targeted the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, and said that none of the Iranian counter-strikes impacted US aims in Operation Epic Fury.
Iran has around 2,000 long-range missiles in its arsenal and another 2,000 shorter-range missiles — both were replenished after last summer’s US and Israeli strikes, the US official told Fox News.
The official said that the goal of the joint Israeli-US operation was to ensure that Iran no longer has the “capability to attack its neighbors: no drones, no missiles, no navy.”
The US official claimed that Washington knows where Iran is stockpiling its highly enriched uranium but that it is difficult to reach.
The operation, the official said, was expected to last “a couple of weeks,” although Trump could decide to wrap it up sooner.
The official added that there were still a number of Iranian air defenses left for the US and Israel to suppress before they would be able to operate more freely from the Iranian skies.
Israeli military operations over the past two years had already killed some of Iran’s senior military officials and severely weakened several of Tehran’s once-feared proxy forces across the Middle East.
After Israel pounded Iran in a 12-day air war last June joined by the United States, the US and Israel had warned that they would strike again if Iran pressed ahead with its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
The threats were backed up by a US military buildup in the region, even as Iranian and US officials held nuclear talks.
