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Iran Says Supreme Leader Was Killed During U.S.-Israeli Strikes

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The Iranian government said on Sunday that U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader.

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Updated March 1, 2026, 12:41 a.m. ET

11 minutes ago

Farnaz FassihiRonen BergmanZolan Kanno-Youngs and Richard Pérez-Peña

Here’s the latest.

The Iranian government said on Sunday that U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the nation’s supreme leader for decades and an implacable enemy of Israel and the United States.

President Trump had announced the supreme leader’s death hours earlier, and called on Iranians to take control of the government. The Iranian state news agency confirmed the death on Sunday morning, as the war entered a second day with another wave of attacks on the country.

He died in his office at home in an attack early Saturday, according to Tasnim, a semiofficial Iranian news agency. The strikes killed several other senior Iranian figures, Iranian state media said. The United States and Israel had spent months developing deep intelligence on the Iranian leadership, according to people familiar with the operation.

Large crowds of Iranians poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities across Iran to celebrate Ayatollah Khamenei’s death. Others mourned his death. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a powerful institution that answers to the supreme leader — vowed to punish U.S. and Israeli aggression.

Iran’s president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist of the Guardian Council will be in charge during the transition period following the death, the Iranian state news agency said on Sunday, citing Mohammed Mokhbher, a senior politician. But the supreme leader’s death raises questions about who would ultimately run the country.

It is not clear whether removing Ayatollah Khamenei, who was 86, will result in significant changes to the system he led. Many people in authority owed their positions to him, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recently demonstrated its grip on the country by brutally crushing mass protests, killing thousands of people.

Mr. Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had both made clear that regime change was a goal of the initial waves of strikes on Iran that began around 1 a.m. local time on Saturday. “When we are finished, take over your government,” Mr. Trump told the Iranian people in a video statement. “It will be yours to take.”

The Iranian leader’s death is a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region.

In retaliation for the attacks, Iran fired waves of ballistic missiles at Israel, where the authorities reported one death. The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait — all of which host U.S. military bases — said they had come under attack, as did Jordan. Falling debris from an Iranian ballistic missile attack killed at least one person in the Emirates, according to its government.

The fighting effectively shut down shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply, according to shipping companies and Tasnim. Major airports, including Dubai International in the United Arab Emirates, and a wide corridor of airspace were closed.

Analysts have warned that the fighting could potentially draw the United States into a protracted conflict with no clear exit. Iran’s leadership oversees extensive military abilities and a network of regional proxy forces that could help sustain a resistance.

Many world leaders urged restraint after the strike on Saturday. But the bombing continued early Sunday, according to Iranians reporting new rounds of explosions on social media. Mr. Trump warned that U.S. strikes “will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of PEACE THROUGHOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AND, INDEED, THE WORLD!”

The effects of the attacks on Iranian civilians were not immediately clear. HRANA, a Washington-based Iranian rights group, said late Saturday that at least 133 civilians had been killed and that 200 others were injured — figures that could not be independently confirmed. The Iranian state media reported dozens of children were killed at a girl’s elementary school near a naval base. The U.S. and Israeli militaries did not immediately comment.

Here’s what else to know:

Celebrations in Tehran: As residents of Iran’s capital celebrated the supreme leader’s death, fireworks lit up the sky and loud Persian dance music filled the streets. But the threat of more attacks by U.S. and Israeli forces cast a pall over the festivities. Read more ›

Precise Targeting: The C.I.A. zeroed in on Ayatollah Khamenei’s location shortly before the United States and Israel attacked Iran. The operation reflects close coordination and intelligence sharing between the United States and Israel, as well as the failure of Iran’s leaders to avoid exposing themselves. Read more ›

Iranian Succession: The power to choose a new supreme leader rests with the Assembly of Experts, a conservative body of clerics who, given Ayatollah Khamenei’s age and infirmities, have probably given ample thought to potential successors. Read more ›

Shipping impacts: The closure of the Strait of Hormuz will almost certainly send oil prices upward. The U.S. Maritime Administration advised vessels to avoid the strait, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that the passage was unsafe for commercial traffic, Tasnim reported. Read more ›

The crisis: Mr. Trump vowed in early January to aid antigovernment demonstrators there. The Iranian government quelled those protests in a bloody crackdown that killed thousands, according to rights groups. Mr. Trump has more recently focused on Iran’s nuclear program. American and Iranian officials held a last-ditch round of mediated talks on Thursday over the program that ended without a breakthrough.

Last year’s strikes: The United States bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities last June during a 12-day-war between Israel and Iran. While Mr. Trump said repeatedly that the Iranian nuclear program had been “obliterated” by those strikes, it later emerged that the effort had been degraded, not destroyed. Read more ›

 Trump Has No Plan for the Iranian People

Trump announces military operation in Iran

•The Atlantic / by Anne Applebaum / Feb 28, 2026 at 9:09 PM

The American bombardment of Iran has been launched without explanation, without Congress, without even an attempt to build public support. Above all it has been launched without a coherent strategy for the Iranian people, and without a plan to let them decide how to build a legitimate Iranian state.

This lack of coherence has plagued the Trump administration’s policy for many weeks. On at least eight occasions during Iran’s nationwide uprising in early January, Trump encouraged Iranians to “take over their institutions” and promised that American help was “on its way.” But just last month, days after the Iranian regime massacred thousands of its own citizens, President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, sent out the opposite message. He described Iran as “a deal that ought to happen” and said the country could be welcomed into “the league of nations.” Vice President J. D. Vance has also said that America’s interests in Iran are limited. “If the Iranian people want to overthrow the regime, that’s up to the Iranian people,” Vance recently told reporters. “What we’re focused on right now is the fact that Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.”

The absence of broader strategy fits a pattern. For decades, American presidents from both parties have oscillated between coercion and engagement with Iran, sometimes offering diplomacy, sometimes sanctions. Doves and hawks both sought to manage the tactics of the Islamic Republic—its nuclear ambitions, its ballistic missiles, its network of proxy militias throughout the Middle East—without ever coming up with a meaningful strategy to combat the root problem: the ideology of the regime itself.

The Islamic Republic is a theocracy founded explicitly to oppose the deepest principles of liberal democracy and the rule of law. During its 47-year reign, this theocratic state underwent no meaningful political reform, made no improvement to its human-rights record, and never stopped trying to export its radicalism abroad. To maintain control, the regime has used mass violence, intimidation, and surveillance. In recent years, the regime has also sought, successfully, to use online smear campaigns to divide and denigrate the Iranian opposition. Nevertheless, as the scholar and activist Ladan Boroumand has written, Western liberal democracies have long preferred to engage the Islamic Republic “almost solely through the paradigm of Realpolitik,” to engage in negotiations that never seemed to work.  

There were plenty of opportunities to try something different. In 2009, at the time of mass protests in Iran, the Obama administration could have put a human-rights campaign at the heart of its Iran policy, promoting the people, ideas, education, and media that could have helped change Iran from within. In 2019, after the cancellation of Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, the first Trump administration could have done the same. But they did not.  

The second Trump administration has gone much farther in the opposite direction, actually dismantling tools that could have helped to promote civic engagement and to build a united opposition in Iran. The administration has taken money away from Iranian human-rights monitoring groups and defunded media projects. Under the leadership of the former Arizona political candidate Kari Lake, the U.S. Agency for Global Media has prevented Radio Farda, the Farsi-language channel of the U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, from using American transmission equipment.

Voice of America, the U.S. government’s other Persian-language channel, cut back coverage and lost credibility by producing partisan broadcasts. The channel’s leadership has actually banned any mention of Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the late shah of Iran, who commands a substantial following both inside and outside the country. As a result, VOA lost ground to the Saudi-funded channel Iran International. Lake also cut funding for another agency, the Open Technology Fund, dedicated to providing virtual private networks and satellite access to Iranians, among others. That decision might also help keep Iranians inside the country isolated from the large dissident movement in the diaspora.

The administration’s apparent lack of interest in the Iranian opposition adds a layer of surreality to the video that Trump posted early Saturday morning. He called on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Iranian armed forces, and the police to “lay down your weapons.” But to whom should they surrender? He almost taunted the Iranian people to take charge. “Let’s see how you respond,” he said. “America is backing you with overwhelming strength and devastating force.” But who is “you”?  

The civil-society and women’s-rights activists who want to build a rule-of-law society, with transparency, accountability, and independent courts? The ethnic minorities—Kurdish, Baluchi, Azerbaijani and others—who want a decentralized state and more autonomy? The sometimes-fanatical supporters of a new monarchy, who have tried in recent months to push others to the sidelines? Breakaway groups inside the revolutionary guard who might be interested in creating a military dictatorship?

The answer matters. As one opposition insider told me at the time of the previous American attack, the mere act of bombing Iran will not by itself create a stable regime. “If there was ever a fantasy that a leader would fly in under the wings of foreign aviators,” he told me, “that is definitely not going to happen.” Another Iranian activist texted me on Saturday morning: “This is one of the best days of my life, Anne; also I am very worried about what comes next.” (Both the opposition insider and the activist requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.)

The point is not that the U.S. should promote democracy for its own sake. The goal, rather, must be to help Iranians achieve normalcy. For the region to be at peace, Tehran must transform itself from the headquarters of an insurgency back into the capital of a country seeking to build peace and prosperity for its own citizens. A stable, law-abiding Iran will help build a stable, law-abiding Middle East. But in order to achieve that, Iran needs not a new dictatorship but self-determination and a pluralist government that respects basic rights. Right now, the Trump administration is not trying to build one.

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