In this 2017 photo, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, sits in a session to deliver his message for the Iranian New Year. A portrait of the late revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is next to him.
Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP
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Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP
In this 2017 photo, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, sits in a session to deliver his message for the Iranian New Year. A portrait of the late revolutionary founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is next to him.
Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/AP
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in Israeli attacks, with U.S. support, on Saturday. He was 86 years old.
President Trump announced the Iranian leader’s death on social media, saying Khamenei could not avoid U.S. intelligence and surveillance. A source briefed on the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran told NPR earlier Saturday that an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.
During his 36-year rule, Khamenei was unwavering in his steadfast antipathy to the U.S. and Israel and to any efforts to reform and bring Iran into the 21st century.
Khamenei was born in July 1939 into a religious family in the Shia Muslim holy city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran and attended theological school. An outspoken opponent of the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Khamenei was arrested several times.
He was surrounded by other Iranian activists, including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became Iran’s first supreme leader following the country’s Islamic Revolution in the late 1970s.
Khamenei survived an assassination attempt in 1981 that cost him the use of his right arm. He served as Iran’s president before succeeding Khomeini as supreme leader in 1989.
Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C., says Khamenei was an unlikely candidate. Khamenei, a midlevel cleric, lacked religious credentials, making him vulnerable, Vatanka explains. He was aware of his lack of prestige and gravitas to succeed Ayatollah Khomeini as the leader of the Islamic Republic. Despite this, he managed to outmaneuver other senior political figures in Iran, demonstrating his cunning and ability to hold onto power, according to Vaez. He asserts that aided by the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Khamenei consolidated his authority to become the longest-serving leader in the Middle East.
“He was a man of strategic patience, always thinking ahead,” he explains. “Thanks to the Revolutionary Guards, he managed to centralize power in his hands and marginalize others.”
Khamenei’s close relationship with the Revolutionary Guards allowed Iran’s military to establish a vast economic empire, controlling significant sectors of the economy while ordinary citizens faced hardships.
Vaez notes that Khamenei initiated Iran’s defensive strategies by cultivating proxies like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to deter direct threats to Iranian territory. Additionally, he prioritized developing conventional deterrence through Iran’s ballistic missile program.
As the supreme leader, Khamenei held authority over all matters related to Iran’s nuclear program. He gradually became more involved in politics, notably intervening in the 2009 presidential election to ensure the victory of his preferred candidate, the controversial conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
This interference sparked widespread protests from Iranians who believed the election was rigged. Under Khamenei’s rule, Iran brutally suppressed demonstrations, resulting in a backlash and sparking further protest movements over the years. Thousands of Iranian citizens, including more than 7,000 killed during mass protests in late December 2025, were victims of this suppression. Khamenei endorsed repressive government actions to maintain stability and legitimacy, failing to address the root causes of the protests. Despite a majority of Iran’s population being born after the revolution and desiring modernization and integration with the global community, Khamenei remained entrenched in an outdated Islamic revolutionary mindset, disregarding the aspirations of the younger generation. He failed miserably in that endeavor. Upon inspection of the facilities, Trump declared that they had been “completely and totally destroyed,” sparking a debate among White House officials and nuclear experts regarding the extent of the setback to Iran’s nuclear program.
According to Vakil from Chatham House, Khamenei underestimated the actions that Israel and the U.S. would take. She believes that Khamenei wrongly assumed he could delay and manipulate the situation, failing to recognize the changing global sentiment towards Iran’s tactics.
The downfall of Khamenei was ultimately triggered by Iran’s utilization of proxy militias in the region. The attack by Hamas, backed by Iran, on Israel in 2023 resulted in a series of events culminating in Israel’s retaliation against Iran.
Following the Hamas-led attack, Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, leading to a conflict that severely weakened the Shia militia, including top leader Hassan Nasrallah.
In 2024, Israel and Iran engaged in direct airstrikes for the first time amidst the escalating conflict. Israel’s targeting of Iranian weapon shipments in Syria also contributed to the downfall of Assad, a key ally of Iran, in late 2024.
By the time of Khamenei’s death, his legacy was in ruins. Israel had crippled key proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, obliterated Iran’s air defenses, and dismantled its nuclear program with U.S. assistance.
Despite a robust ballistic missile program that Khamenei had spearheaded, Iran now finds itself in a weakened state with an uncertain leadership future.
