Ayatollah Khamenei, reported killed by US-Israeli airstrikes, embodied fearsome anti-Western rule

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, has been an inveterate foe of the West, crushing internal opposition while supporting proxy forces across the region in the hope of making his country respected and feared.U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday declared that Khamenei died in the conflict that had defined his rule of Iran, and a senior Israeli official told Reuters his body had been found following U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.Iranian authorities had not confirmed his death but satellite images showed significant damage to the leader's Tehran compound, one of the first targets of the bombing campaign.Khamenei's death would represent a massive blow to the Islamic Republic that he had led since 1989, a decade after rising to prominence in the theocratic revolution that toppled Iran's monarchy and rocked the Middle East.MOUNTING CRISES OF KHAMENEI'S RULEHe survived foreign pressure before but, even before Saturday's attack, was facing the gravest crisis ...

• 01 Mar 2026