It has been a wild day on the ground in the Middle East. The airstrike campaign by the United States and Israel has now reportedly resulted in the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

This report first came in to Israeli officials, after the Tehran locations linked to Khamenei were laid waste during the targeted strikes.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled the Islamic Republic for more than three decades, has died following an Israeli strike in Tehran.

Israeli leaders confirmed Khamenei compound and offices were reduced to rubble early Saturday after a targeted strike in downtown Tehran.

“Khamenei was the contemporary Middle East’s longest-serving autocrat. He did not get to be that way by being a gambler. Khamenei was an ideologue, but one who ruthlessly pursued the preservation and protection of his ideology, often taking two steps forward and one step back,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of FDD’s Iran program, told Fox News Digital.

“Khamenei’s worldview was shaped by his militant anti-Americanism and antisemitism, which first manifested itself in his protests against the Shah of Iran,” he added.

A close ally of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Khamenei rose through the new system and served as president from 1981 to 1989 before becoming supreme leader after Khomeini’s death that same year.

Over decades in power, Khamenei consolidated control over Iran’s political and security system, presiding over repeated crackdowns on dissent and maintaining a hardline posture toward Washington and Israel.

The possibility that Khamenei had been killed took root right after the first wave of strikes, when the ayatollah was supposed to address the Iranian public… and then didn’t show up.

He did not, in fact, speak within minutes.

I wonder why? https://t.co/zF97QJ2VMj

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) February 28, 2026

Reports then came in from Iranian state media that Khamenei family members had indeed been killed in the airstrikes – specifically, Khamenei’s daughter-in-law. But that meant that the Khamenei family was present at their compound, and could mean that the ayatollah himself was also dead.

Other news organizations quickly began to spread the word coming from Israel’s report, with Axios reporting that Khamenei’s body had been recovered and seen by Israeli intelligence. Another report from CNN said that an official statement was being prepared – but by whom? Israel? The United States? The remaining regime leaders in Iran? And exactly how many of those are left in Iran proper? We know the foreign ministry negotiators are in Europe – can they actually speak for the regime when they can’t confirm anything?

BBC: Can you confirm whether the top leadership is still alive, or where they are?

Iran's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Esmail Baghaei: I’m not in a position to confirm anything. pic.twitter.com/vwow1O9r22

— Clash Report (@clashreport) February 28, 2026

It seems like President Trump is waiting for the dust to clear, but knows that this first wave of airstrikes has seen some success. Just how much is what we all want to know. And we are now getting some clarity on why the attack took place when it did, in broad daylight.

US official confirms to Fox that US believes Khamenei and 5-10 top Iranian leaders killed in initial Israeli strike on compound; agree with Israel’s intelligence assessment.

A senior US defense official tells me that the US government agrees with the Israeli assessment that…

— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) February 28, 2026

The full post reads:

US official confirms to Fox that US believes Khamenei and 5-10 top Iranian leaders killed in initial Israeli strike on compound; agree with Israel’s intelligence assessment.

A senior US defense official tells me that the US government agrees with the Israeli assessment that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead, along with 5-10 other top Iranian leaders who were all meeting at a compound in Tehran Saturday morning. The top IRGC commander also killed.

Multiple sources tell me that the timeline for the strike had to be moved up based on intelligence and this “target of opportunity.”
“There was a deliberate decision to accelerate the timeline,” officials told Fox.

That is why the US and Israel took the unusual decision to strike during the daytime to achieve the element of surprise and to target this meeting. Normally the US military would not launch an operation like this during the day. The meeting accelerated the timeline.

“This was a massive, wildly bold daytime attack,” a senior US defense official told me.

“It caught the senior leadership off guard, a Saturday morning during Ramadan and on Shabbat in the daytime.”

“We hit the senior leaders right out of the gate.” (Israel conducted the targeted strike).

With no boots on the ground to confirm who is dead or alive, and no ability to trust anything that the Iranian regime may spew out, it is going to take some time to confirm if Khamenei is dead, and this post will be updated as news unfolds. However, the fact that he hasn’t immediately appeared on state media or on X is an encouraging sign that the regime may have to change by necessity, even if the Islamic Republic infrastructure is still in place and a successor to Khamenei may be announced. Whoever that leader may be has to know that they have an automatic target on them, and not just placed there by Israel and the United States, but by the Iranian people as well.

UPDATE 2:45 PM PT
President Trump announced Khamenei’s death on Truth Social.

If Khamenei isn’t dead, all he has to do is show up live on camera. We’re waiting. Posts on X don’t cut it. It’s looking more certain every second that the ayatollah is dead and the Iranian people are rightfully rejoicing.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click