Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in Israeli attacks, with U.S. support, on Saturday. He was 86 years old. President Trump announced Khamenei’s death on social media, saying the Iranian leader could not avoid U.S. intelligence and surveillance. A source briefed on the U.S.-Israeli attacks told NPR earlier Saturday that an Israeli airstrike killed Khamenei.
During his 36-year rule, Khamenei was unwavering in his antipathy toward the U.S. and Israel and resisted efforts to reform and modernize Iran. Born in July 1939 into a religious family in the Shia holy city of Mashhad, he attended theological school and became an outspoken opponent of the U.S.-backed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, enduring multiple arrests. He was surrounded by other activists, including Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who became Iran’s first supreme leader after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Khamenei survived a 1981 assassination attempt that cost him the use of his right arm. He served as Iran’s president before succeeding Khomeini as supreme leader in 1989. Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, says Khamenei was an unlikely successor: then a midlevel cleric, he lacked the religious credentials and prestige to be Khomeini’s heir and initially felt vulnerable. “He spent the first few years in power being very nervous,” Vatanka says. “He really literally felt that somebody is going to, you know, take him down from the position of power.”
With help from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Khamenei consolidated power and became the region’s longest-serving leader. Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, says Khamenei used strategic patience to appropriate levers of power and sideline rivals. His ties to the IRGC allowed Iran’s military to build a vast commercial empire that controls large parts of the economy while many ordinary Iranians struggled.
Khamenei also prioritized defensive policies and regional influence, cultivating proxies such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza to deter direct attacks on Iranian soil, and backing a robust ballistic missile program. As supreme leader he had the final word on Iran’s nuclear program.
Over time he increasingly intervened in politics, most notably in the 2009 presidential election when he intervened to ensure the victory of his favored candidate, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Widespread protests that followed were brutally suppressed. Analysts say Iran killed thousands under Khamenei’s rule, including more than 7,000 people during weeks of mass protests that began in late December 2025, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency, which tracks rights abuses in Iran.
Sanam Vakil, an Iran expert at Chatham House, says Khamenei consistently supported repressive crackdowns, viewing protests as threats to state stability and legitimacy. Vatanka adds that Khamenei remained rooted in an Islamic revolutionary worldview at odds with a population where about 75% were born after the revolution and aspired to modernization. “The 75% he should have catered to, listened to and address[ed] policies to satisfy their aspirations,” Vatanka says. “He failed in that miserably.”
The Arab Spring and later regional unrest heightened Khamenei’s concerns about regime survival. After the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 he worried the regime might not endure. Iran’s economy, hampered by stringent Western sanctions, compounded domestic unrest.
In 2013 Khamenei agreed to secret negotiations with the U.S. over Iran’s nuclear program, leading to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. He remained deeply distrustful of the U.S., arguing that concessions on the nuclear issue would invite pressure on missiles, human rights, and regional policies. President Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the deal reinforced Khamenei’s skepticism. Analysts say Iran increased nuclear enrichment after that and neared the capability to build a bomb.
When Trump reached out in early 2025 about a new deal, Khamenei delayed and dragged out negotiations. That pause proved costly. Israel said it would neutralize Iran’s nuclear program. In June 2025, Israel launched strikes on key facilities and killed scientists and generals; Iran retaliated and the two sides exchanged missile strikes. On June 21, 2025, the U.S. launched major airstrikes on three of Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites; Trump said the facilities were “completely and totally obliterated,” though experts debated how much the nuclear program had been set back.
Khamenei underestimated what Israel and the U.S. would do, Vakil says. “I think that Khamenei always assumed that he could play for time, and what he really didn’t understand is that the world around Iran had very much changed,” she says. “The world had tired of Khamenei and Iranian foot-dragging and antics … and so that was a miscalculation.”
Iran’s use of proxy militias across the region contributed to his downfall. When Hamas, backed by Iran, attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing nearly 1,200 people and kidnapping 251, it triggered a cascade of events that culminated in Israel’s attack on Iran. The day after the Hamas attack, Iran-backed Hezbollah began firing rockets into Israel, prompting a conflict that led to the decimation of the militia’s top brass, including its senior leadership. Israel and Iran traded direct airstrikes for the first time in 2024 as that conflict unfolded.
Israel’s bombing of Iranian weapons shipments in Syria weakened the regime of Syria’s then-dictator Bashar al-Assad, who fell in December 2024 and fled to Russia in early January 2025. By the time Khamenei died, his regional network had been significantly degraded: key proxies were hobbled, Iran’s air defenses were reportedly weakened, and its nuclear program had been severely damaged by Israeli and U.S. strikes.
What remains is a robust ballistic missile program, long a central element of Khamenei’s defensive strategy. With his death, Iran is left weakened and vulnerable, and it is unclear who will replace him to lead a now-diminished state.