Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Killed in U.S. and Israel Strikes, Trump Says

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of Iran since 1989, was killed in U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on his country, President Donald Trump said Saturday.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Khamenei’s apparent killing marks a dramatic geopolitical moment with few clear outcomes. Trump, in launching the strikes on Iran, called for regime change in the country, and the military attack appears to have targeted leaders across Iran’s government. But it’s far from certain that Khamenei’s reported death will lead to the kind of change the U.S. or Israel is looking for.

Khamenei had set out a succession plan in the event of his assassination, the New York Times reported earlier in February, but the actual details of the plan were kept secret. The CIA believes Khamenei’s killing could lead to hardliners taking charge of the country, the Wall Street Journal reported. With military activity continuing, it’s not even clear who else in Iran’s government may have been killed.

The U.S. government has long viewed Khamenei as a threat. Early in Trump’s first term, as the president signaled his intention to back out of the nuclear deal negotiated under President Barack Obama, Khamenei declared the U.S. Iran’s “number one enemy.”

The Israeli military said Saturday that not only had its forces killed Khamenei, but had also successfully targeted and killed other top military officials in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

In his lengthy post announcing Khamenei’s death, Trump said Iran’s regime now has limited options, and that military attacks on the country would “continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

“We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us,” Trump said in the post. “As I said last night, ‘Now they can have Immunity, later they only get 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. 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.”

John Bolton, the president’s sometimes-foe and former national security advisor, told NOTUS on Saturday that if the reports are true, it amplified the chance of the regime crumbling, even if the process brought with it widespread turmoil.

If the U.S. and Israel have been successful in killing officials across the regime, he said, “a succession crisis gets very complicated.”

Bolton said that the crisis could give the opposition an opportunity to take over the conventional military while the Revolutionary Guard is bogged down by infighting.

Bolton, who had unsuccessfully urged Trump to overthrow the regime during his first term and has personally been a target of its forces, said the president “can’t back away from” regime change now.

“What I worry about though, is that he has a propensity — as the 12-day war last summer showed or the snatching of [former Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro but not overthrowing the rest of the regime showed — he has this propensity toward a one-and-done approach where he does one thing and says, ‘OKI’ve achieved total victory. Now it’s up to the opposition,’” Bolton said. “That isn’t going to work either.”