Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who turned the country into a powerful anti-U.S. force and extended its military influence across the Middle East while crushing repeated domestic unrest, was killed in Israeli and U.S. strikes, a senior Israeli official was quoted as saying by Reuters on Saturday.
The news alert came around the same time when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his nation and said that there were “many signs indicating Khamenei is no longer.” The leader, however, stopped short of an outright confirmation. “Khamenei’s compound was destroyed,” he said, claiming that senior figures in Iran’s security and nuclear establishment had been eliminated.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim and Mehr news agencies are reporting that the country’s Supreme Leader Khamenei is “steadfast and firm in commanding the field”.
This contradicts reports from Reuters and Israeli media that he was killed today in the US-Israeli air strikes.
Effie Defrin, the spokesperson for the Israeli military, has just made a televised address in which he claimed Israel has killed several top Iranian officials in today’s attacks on Iran.
The most prominent of those Israel claims to have killed is Ali Shamkhani, former secretary of Iran’s National Security Council and close adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei.
Shamkhani survived a June 2025 Israeli strike on his home in Tehran.
Defrin also claimed to have killed Mohammad Pakpour, a commander in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Amir Nasirzadeh, Iran’s defence minister.
He added that Israeli warplanes targeted several locations across Iran, especially missile launcher sites.
Defrin did not define a timeframe when a reporter asked how long military operations would continue.
