TEHRAN — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran and the clerical authority who presided over the Islamic Republic for more than three decades, was killed early Sunday in a joint United States and Israeli military strike that destroyed his fortified compound in central Tehran, Iranian state media and American officials said. He was 86.
The precision airstrike, carried out before dawn, reduced the heavily guarded residence and command complex of Iran’s highest authority to rubble, according to satellite imagery and official accounts released by both governments. Iranian state television confirmed Mr. Khamenei’s death hours after President Trump publicly signaled the operation Saturday evening, calling it a decisive blow against what he described as “the world’s most dangerous state sponsor of terror.”
The killing of Mr. Khamenei — the first time a sitting Iranian supreme leader has died at the hands of a foreign adversary — represents a watershed moment in Middle Eastern geopolitics and the most consequential rupture in Iran’s governing order since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iranian authorities declared 40 days of national mourning and described the cleric as having “attained martyrdom in the path of resistance,” while security forces moved swiftly to seal off central Tehran and deploy across major cities.
Within hours, Iran launched what officials called a retaliatory campaign across the region. Barrages of ballistic missiles and armed drones were fired toward American and Israeli military installations, triggering air defense responses across several countries. Authorities in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait reported impacts or attempted strikes on facilities hosting U.S. forces. Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Qatar said their air defenses intercepted Iranian projectiles traversing their airspace.
The Iranian Red Crescent said at least 200 people were killed and 747 injured inside Iran in the initial exchange. Israeli officials confirmed one death and more than 100 injuries after missiles struck residential areas in northern Israel. The Pentagon said American bases in the Gulf region sustained “limited damage,” though no U.S. fatalities were reported.
American and Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified planning, described the operation as a “decapitation strike” intended not only to eliminate Iran’s supreme leader but also to dismantle the command structure of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country’s national security apparatus. Iranian state media later confirmed that several senior figures had also been killed, including the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, the national security council secretary Ali Shamkhani, and Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh.
Iranian authorities said members of Mr. Khamenei’s immediate family — including a daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter — were among those killed in the compound.
Plumes of black smoke rose for hours Sunday from the ruins of the complex, long considered the most secure site in Iran. Video broadcast by state television showed rescue workers sifting through collapsed concrete and twisted steel as crowds gathered in surrounding streets, some weeping openly and chanting religious slogans.
In a televised address from the White House late Saturday, Mr. Trump framed the killing as a strategic and moral turning point. “Tonight the world is safer,” he said. “The Iranian people now have a chance to reclaim their nation from a regime that has oppressed them for generations.” He urged Iranians to rise against their leaders, echoing longstanding American rhetorical support for anti-government protests that have periodically shaken Iranian cities in recent years.
The strike follows months of escalating confrontation between Iran and the United States–Israel alliance, including coordinated attacks in June 2025 on Iranian nuclear infrastructure and the assassinations of several Iranian military officials abroad. Analysts say the decision to target Mr. Khamenei himself suggests a shift from containment toward regime destabilization.
Mr. Khamenei had ruled Iran since 1989, when he succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic. Over 36 years, he consolidated clerical authority over the state, expanded Iran’s regional network of allied militias from Lebanon to Yemen, and steered the country through wars by proxy, sanctions crises and periodic domestic uprisings.
His leadership blended ideological rigidity with pragmatic maneuvering. He sanctioned nuclear negotiations when necessary, yet consistently rejected Western political influence. Under his tenure, the Revolutionary Guard grew into Iran’s dominant military and economic force, while dissent at home was met with surveillance, imprisonment and, at times, lethal repression.
By the time of his death, Iran faced mounting internal strain: a battered currency, youth unemployment, and waves of protest — most notably the nationwide demonstrations after the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in morality-police custody. Though those protests were suppressed, they exposed deep fractures between the state and a younger generation.
The reaction inside Iran on Sunday appeared sharply divided. In some Tehran neighborhoods, residents shuttered shops and remained indoors amid a heavy security presence. Elsewhere, according to witnesses and videos circulating online, small groups celebrated quietly, honking car horns or setting off fireworks before security forces dispersed them.
Abroad, segments of the Iranian diaspora reacted more openly. In Los Angeles, home to the largest Iranian community outside Iran, hundreds gathered in Westwood waving pre-revolutionary Iranian flags. In Tripoli, Lebanon, where Iran-backed militias wield influence, crowds held rival demonstrations — some mourning Mr. Khamenei, others cheering news of his death.
The immediate political future of Iran is uncertain. The constitution provides for the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body, to appoint a new supreme leader, but the process has never occurred during wartime conditions or after an external assassination. Analysts say the Revolutionary Guard may assert de facto control during the transition, raising the possibility of a more overtly militarized state.
“The supreme leader was the final arbiter balancing Iran’s factions,” said Vali Nasr, a Middle East scholar at Johns Hopkins University. “Without him, the system loses its center of gravity. The risk now is fragmentation or, alternatively, consolidation under the Guard.”
Regional leaders urged restraint as missile exchanges continued intermittently Sunday. The United Nations Security Council scheduled an emergency session, while European governments warned that the killing risked igniting a broader regional war.
For many in Iran, the loss of Mr. Khamenei closes a defining chapter of the republic he helped shape — and opens an uncertain, potentially volatile era. His rule, forged in revolution and sustained through confrontation with the West, ended not in succession but in sudden annihilation, leaving a power vacuum amid the widening shock waves of a conflict now openly at war’s edge.