Iranian state media have confirmed that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in his office during joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, following earlier claims by American and Israeli officials. The confirmation on Sunday came after Iran’s Tasnim and Mehr news agencies had initially reported that he remained “steadfast and firm in commanding the field.”
US President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that the 86-year-old leader was killed in coordinated strikes that began early Saturday.
Born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, Khamenei came from a modest clerical family. He pursued religious studies in Mashhad and later in Qom, developing a reputation for intellectual depth and an interest in poetry and literature. In the early 1960s, he joined Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s opposition movement against Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. From 1963 onward, he was repeatedly arrested by SAVAK and spent periods in exile for anti-regime activism.
After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Khamenei rose swiftly through the ranks of the new political system, serving in key posts including president from 1981 to 1989. Following Khomeini’s death in 1989, the Assembly of Experts appointed him supreme leader.
Over three decades, he consolidated authority over Iran’s political structure, steering a foreign policy centered on resistance to US influence while shaping domestic politics through shifting reformist and conservative administrations.
