Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who played a behind-the-scenes role in Iran’s Islamic revolution, served two terms as president in the 1980s, was killed Saturday as Israel and the United States launched a joint attack on Iran. He was 86.
President Trump announced the death in a Truth Social post, calling the ayatollah “one of the most evil people in History.” Hours later, his death was confirmed by announcers on Iranian state television, who said Ayatollah Khamenei was killed at his office.
Black smoke billowed over the ayatollah’s compound in Tehran on Saturday, near the outset of a joint military operation aimed at decimating Iran’s nuclear program and military and fueling a change in government.
Ali Khamenei was born July 17, 1939, in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad, where his father was a Shiite cleric of humble means. He was the second of eight children, and he and his family “had a difficult life,” sometimes with little to eat but bread and raisins, he said in a biography published on his website.
