Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major strike by Israel and the United States, several news agencies reported, citing Iranian state media. The killing of the 86-year-old man has cast doubt on the future of the Islamic Republic and raised the risk of regional instability.
President Donald Trump announced the death hours earlier, saying it gave Iranians the “best chance” to “take back” their country.
Read also | Khamenei death news LIVE: 40 days of mourning announced after US-Israeli strikes
Khamenei was killed in a raid on his compound in central Tehran, state media said. His death in his office “showed that he consistently stood among the people and at the head of his duties, facing what officials say is global arrogance,” state television said.
What next in Iran?
The death of Khamenei, who ruled his nation with an iron fist for nearly 37 years, raised the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region, the New York Times reported.
The attack opened a stunning new chapter in US intervention in Iran, carried the potential for retaliatory violence and wider war and represented a surprising flexing of military power for the US president, who swept into office on an “America first” platform and vowed to avoid “eternal wars”, the AP news agency reported.
Iran, which responded to the strikes with its own counterattack, warned of retaliation, and the cabinet said the “great crime will never go unanswered.” The paramilitary Revolutionary Guards threatened to launch “the most intensive offensive operation” ever.
The killing of Khamenei in the Trump administration’s second attack on Iran in eight months appears to have created a leadership vacuum in the absence of a known successor.
Khamenei succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeiniwho led the 1979 Iranian Revolution that culminated in the overthrow of the Pahlavi dynasty.
What will the killings mean for the leadership in Iran?
The death adds urgency to one of the most critical questions raised by Trump’s attack, according to a CNN analysis — Would the removal of top leaders unleash a flurry of institutional reforms or unleash uncontrollable political forces that would deepen repression and tear the country apart?
Read also | Who was Ali Khamenei? Iran’s supreme leader was killed in US-Israeli missile attacks
“At some point they’re going to call me to ask who I would like (as leader),” Trump told NBC
Who will succeed Khamenei?
Khamenei’s death may also be the most existential threat to Iran’s Islamist regime since the revolution in 1979. But according to Politico, it doesn’t necessarily mean a quick end to the theocracy that rules the country.
Iran has an elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, but the real power rests with its supreme leader. Iran has had only two supreme leaders since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 1989, Khamenei was chosen by the Assembly of Experts, a council of clerics, to succeed the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who died at the age of 86.
The Supreme Leader had the final say on all major policies during his decade in power. He led Iran’s clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guards, the two main centers of power in the ruling theocracy.
Khamenei’s death left no apparent successor. For years, former president Ebrahim Raisi was favored to replace Khamenei after the supreme leader’s death. But he died in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Major turning point in Iran: Experts
Khamenei’s death is a major turning point in Iran since the transition to leadership in 1979, author and Iran expert Deepika Saraswat told Live Mint on Sunday.
“Khamenei was killed during a war when continuity in leadership is generally expected because decisions are made by the Defense Council anyway. I don’t see an immediate break at this point. But I can expect a change in leadership before the war is over and a new supreme leader emerges. Perhaps the Wilayat al-Faqih Institute will also change,” and we may see a collective leadership Fellow, Manosoharaste, instead of one leader Sarasoharaste Parrikar Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis said.
Wilayat al-Faqih (Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) is a core Shia political doctrine that stipulates that a qualified, just faqih (jurist) is the guardian of the Islamic community. The foundation of Iranian Shia authority lies in the doctrine of Wilayat al-Faqih, which asserts that a person who possesses specific characteristics sits at the top of the power structure.
“But all these things will become clear when the war is over,” said Saraswat, the author of the book Between survival and status: Iran’s Counter-Hegemonic Geopolitics.
Will Mojtaba Khamenei be the next Supreme Leader?
Since then, the son of the slain supreme leader, Mojtab Khamenei, has been discussed as one possible successor. However, he is seen more as a shadowy figure with behind-the-scenes influence, Politico reported. Mojtaba is believed to play an important role in managing her father’s estate.
Khamenei reportedly selected three candidates to take his place during last June’s 12-day war. Their names have not yet been released.
Uncertainty over succession could create an opportunity for regime opponents, analysts say. In video comments announcing the US strikes on Iran on Saturday, Trump called on Iranian citizens to seize the opportunity to overthrow the regime. “Take your reigns when we’re done. It’ll be up to you,” he said. “This will probably be your only chance for generations.
At home, Khamenei also faced challenges. From a massive uprising in 2009 over allegations of election fraud to recent nationwide protests seeking to topple the regime, which won Trump’s support in January before being crushed by the Iranian government.
“After Khamenei, Iran is not necessarily a post-Islamic Republic of Iran,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior Iranian director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, as quoted by Politico.
“The Islamic Republic was able to survive significant domestic and foreign pressure.”
The joint US-Israeli operation, which officials said had been planned for months, took place on Saturday during Ramadan, the Islamic month of fasting. Tense negotiations followed and warnings from Trump, who last year trumpeted his administration’s success in disabling the country’s nuclear program but still cast the final round as necessary to stave off its potential revival.
Read also | Khamenei killed in Israeli-American strikes, Iranian media confirm
“This is the beginning. I expect more attacks on the leadership of the Islamic regime, its ballistic missile capabilities, nuclear and military industrial facilities and security forces (especially the IRGC),” Brig. Gene. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, head of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS), told LiveMint in an email response.
Reza Pahlavi and the IRGC
Reza Pahlavi, the exiled son of Iran’s last Shah, issued his own statement shortly after the strikes began. The regime is “collapsing”, Pahlavi said in comments posted on social media, praising Trump for what he described as a “humanitarian intervention”.
“However, despite the arrival of this help, we will see the final victory,” Pahlavi said. “It is we, the people of Iran, who will complete this task in this final battle. The time to return to the streets is nigh.”
Pahlavi, who lives in the US, has sought to position himself as the main opposition leader to the Islamist regime. The level of his support among Iranians is unclear.
Iran’s elite military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, could take the lead.
Full power under hardline IRGC generals would likely mean continued repression in Iran under a military structure — and a fiercely anti-American government that could still wreak havoc in the region, Politico reported.
In January, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged that in the event of Khamenei’s death, “nobody knows who would take over” the reins of power in the country.
“That’s an open question,” Rubio told senators afterward.
Failed nuclear negotiations
Tensions have risen sharply in recent weeks as the Trump administration has built the largest force of US warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades. The president has insisted he wants a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program as the country grapples with growing dissent following nationwide protests.
Although Trump declared Iran’s nuclear program destroyed by strikes last year, the country has been rebuilding the infrastructure it has lost, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to AP reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump’s decision-making process.
The official said intelligence showed Iran had developed the ability to produce its own high-quality centrifuges, an important step in developing the highly enriched uranium needed for weapons.
Trump’s claims that the nuclear program and long-range missiles pose an imminent risk to the United States have been exaggerated and contradict US intelligence assessments, according to a CNN analysis.
Read also | Israel-Iran oil price war: 5 major triggers likely to shape the stock market
“We’re not doing it for now. We’re doing it for the future,” Trump said in a video released early Saturday from his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Currently, any nuclear negotiations with the US are effectively on hold, and the sudden escalation and death of Iran’s supreme leader make it highly unlikely that they will resume in the near future. Any future talks would depend on de-escalation, internal Iranian political shifts and major changes in strategic calculations on both sides.
Impact on the Middle East
The death has exposed the Middle East to the risk of a wider conflict, with implications for energy markets, regional alliances and global diplomacy.
The strikes could rattle global markets, especially if Iran makes the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial shipping. A third of global seaborne oil exports will pass through the strait in 2025.
This will probably be your only chance for generations.
Iran faced widespread criticism from several Muslim-majority countries as well as non-governmental and religious organizations after it carried out retaliatory attacks on US and Israeli military bases located in several neighboring Muslim countries on Saturday following the US-Israeli attacks on Tehran.
Saudi Arabia “expressed its strongest condemnation of the brazen and cowardly Iranian attacks targeting Riyadh and Eastern Province regionswhich were repelled,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.
The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) condemned Iran for what it called “targeting the sovereignty and territory of neighboring member states – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Jordan and Qatar. The OIC said the attacks had escalated and posed a threat to the stability of the region.”
Read also | Saudi Arabia, UAE, OIC condemn Iranian strikes on Muslim neighbors
In a statement issued by the General Secretariat of the Muslim World League, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulkarim Al Issa, League Secretary General and Chairman Organization of Muslim Scholarscondemned the attack, calling it a blatant act of aggression against religious values.
Clearly, Iran’s rival powers, including Saudi Arabia and Turkey, may reevaluate their strategies toward Tehran in a post-Khamenei Iran. Non-state actors linked to Iran could also react unpredictably.
(With input from agencies, CNN and Politico)
