Iranian Supreme Chief Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed after a large U.S. and Israeli navy operation Saturday, President Trump mentioned, becoming a member of a number of Israeli official sources and a senior U.S. intelligence official who had confirmed the information to CBS Information.
“Khamenei, some of the evil folks in Historical past, is useless,” Mr. Trump posted on social media.
He added that the U.S. authorities is “listening to that lots of their IRGC, Navy, and different Safety and Police Forces, not need to battle, and are on the lookout for Immunity from us.”
Mr. Trump continued that the “heavy and pinpoint bombing, nonetheless, will proceed, uninterrupted all through the week or, so long as mandatory to attain our goal of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned earlier Saturday that there are “rising indicators” that Khamenei is “gone” after the mission. When requested if Khamenei had been killed, Mr. Trump earlier informed NBC Information by cellphone on Saturday that he had “spoken to lots of people past and we really feel sure, we really feel, we really feel that that may be a right story.”
An Israeli broadcaster mentioned Saturday that Netanyahu had been proven a photograph of Khamenei’s physique.
Persons are cheering within the streets of Tehran, in keeping with a CBS Information producer in Tehran. However the state media in Tehran has not confirmed Khamenei’s dying, and neither has the Iranian International Ministry.
The Free Press: This Is How the Islamic Republic Falls
Mr. Trump informed NBC Information that Khamenei “killed many individuals” and has “destroyed a rustic.”
“The those that make all the choices, most of them are gone,” he mentioned.
The Israel Protection Forces mentioned in a press convention Saturday that seven Iranian officers and commanders had been killed, together with Ali Shamkhani, an adviser to Khamenei.
Khamenei, 86, had been Iran’s supreme chief since 1989, succeeding the chief of Iran’s 1979 revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Khamenei managed all branches of the federal government and the navy and was thought of the non secular chief. It is unclear who will succeed him.
Pleiades Neo (c) Airbus DS 2026/AP
Iran’s supreme chief since 1989
In Iran’s hierarchy, Khamenei had nobody to reply to however God. On the job, nonetheless, he was a hostage to the highly effective and competing political factions of his nation. Towards the percentages, he managed to maintain them loyal for greater than three many years — they usually helped him implement an Islamic regime the vast majority of Iranians not wished.
The ayatollah backed the ruthless suppression of political dissent and turned a blind eye to corruption and abuse amongst these he relied on, particularly the highly effective Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
“There’s corruption throughout the entire system,” mentioned Sanam Vakil, director of the Center East and North Africa Program at London’s Chatham Home assume tank, chatting with CBS Information earlier than the Iranian chief’s dying. He described Khamenei as “a little bit of a pragmatist,” somebody who understood “the distribution of energy, and that for this technique to outlive, you want loyalty and also you want loyalists.”
Born within the northern metropolis of Mashhad, Khamenei was the second of eight youngsters. He was educated at numerous Islamic seminaries, and as a younger man, he studied beneath the person who would turn out to be Iran’s first supreme chief, Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini.
In 1979, like many clerics, he joined the Islamic Revolution that toppled the pro-Western regime of Iran’s royal household. He was introduced into the ruling internal circle, serving briefly as the brand new Islamic Republic’s deputy protection minister after which two phrases as Iran’s president between 1981 and 1989.
On June 4, 1989, following Ayatollah Khomeini’s dying, Khamenei was elected by the nation’s highly effective Guardian Council of 88 Islamic students to be the brand new supreme chief. That made him commander-in-chief of the navy and head of the manager, legislative and judicial branches of the federal government, in addition to Iran’s final spiritual authority.
He lacked the person authority of his predecessor, nonetheless, so Khamenei constructed a community of allies and cronies to bolster his grip on energy, together with senior figures within the Revolutionary Guard.
In his guide “Studying Khamenei,” Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for Worldwide Peace wrote that the Iranian chief “handpicks the group’s senior command and shuffles them frequently; he additionally oversaw the Guards’ speedy rise to turn out to be Iran’s strongest political and financial establishment.”
In 2003, Khamenei issued a fatwa — an indeniable spiritual edict — forbidding the manufacturing, stockpiling or use of weapons of mass destruction, on the grounds that it was forbidden by Islam.
However regardless of the general public shunning of such weapons, he gave his implicit backing to the enlargement of Iran’s nuclear program, which the nation’s leaders have at all times maintained — unconvincingly — is solely for peaceable functions.
Khamenei’s authorities boosted its stockpiles of near-weapons-grade uranium. A U.S. intelligence evaluation from Might 2025 mentioned the nation “virtually actually shouldn’t be producing nuclear weapons, however Iran has undertaken actions lately that higher place it to provide them, if it chooses to take action.” Netanyahu maintained Iran was maybe solely months to a 12 months away from with the ability to construct a bomb.
Years of rigidity and battle with U.S.
Prior to now 12 months, Mr. Trump sought a take care of Iran to restrict its nuclear program, after he eliminated the U.S. from a 2015 deal throughout his first time period. These talks proved difficult, with Mr. Trump saying Iran shouldn’t be allowed to complement uranium — a requirement Khamenei rejected. Mr. Trump has mentioned Iran “should utterly quit hopes of acquiring a Nuclear Weapon.” Netanyahu has lengthy been skeptical of putting a take care of Iran.
When critical negotiations started throughout then-President Barack Obama’s first time period on the nuclear deal, Khamenei made it clear he was skeptical of the talks with Western nations that he deemed untrustworthy, however he by no means really condemned the dialogue.
“I’m not optimistic concerning the negotiations, and they’ll lead nowhere,” he declared in a 2014 speech. “However I’m not in opposition to them.”
It was typical of Khamenei’s gnomic pronouncements. They left loads of wiggle room, in order that, nonetheless issues turned out, he might declare to have been proper.
Solely a tightly knit group of insiders with entry to his guarded compound knew what he actually thought. Khamenei by no means traveled outdoors of Iran throughout his lengthy reign as supreme chief, and by no means gave an interview.
Maybe it was feared that public publicity would have diminished his mystique and authority.
Khamenei got here of age in the course of the period of pushback in opposition to British and American affect over Iran’s huge oil sources. He blamed the U.S. for the CIA-backed coup that introduced down Iran’s democratic authorities in 1953, and for supporting the autocratic regime of Shah Reza Pahlavi.
In 1979, he supported the scholars who held 52 People hostage for greater than 444 days and, over the next many years, his dislike and mistrust of america solely grew.
Nearly three many years after taking up as Iran’s supreme chief, Khamenei declared America “the primary enemy of our nation.”
In 2018, when Mr. Trump unilaterally pulled the U.S. out of the worldwide nuclear settlement with Iran that was negotiated beneath his predecessor, Khamenei turned it into an I-told-you-so second, holding it up as proof that Washington couldn’t be trusted.
However many within the nation would not belief him, both.
The 12 months after the nuclear pact started unraveling, and within the years since, younger Iranians bitterly against their nation’s clerical rulers took to the streets, carrying posters bearing the as soon as unthinkable slogan: “Loss of life to the supreme chief.”
“The folks’s sense of loyalty to the revolution and the Islamic ideology of the revolution declined considerably whereas Khamenei was chief,” mentioned Vakil. “On the similar time, the financial energy of Iran declined considerably, so clearly he misplaced an enormous quantity of legitimacy along with his folks.”
Somewhat than have interaction with their issues or think about liberal reforms, nonetheless, Khamenei doubled down. He blamed the nation’s dismal financial system and the home unrest on the U.S. and its ally Israel, and gave his tacit blessing to the violent suppression of protests, at the same time as safety forces killed a number of the demonstrators.
In 2014, Khamenei’s workplace launched footage of the chief in a hospital recovering from prostate surgical procedure, prompting fixed rumors about his deteriorating well being. However he held on for practically 12 extra years — the unflinching overlord of revolutionary beliefs that had been an increasing number of out of step with a modernizing Iran.
