Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme chief of Islamic Republic of Iran, killed in US-Israeli strikes | EUROtoday

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died aged 86 following joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, plunging the area into additional instability.

Donald Trump confirmed Khamenei was killed within the airstrikes in a single day, describing him as “one of the most evil people in history” and claiming that now could be the “single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country”.

Trump’s affirmation got here after a senior Israeli authorities supply informed The Independent that the clerical ruler, who has overseen Iran’s transformation into one of many Middle East’s dominant powers since 1989, was killed in a strike that flattened his compound.

Donald Trump confirmed that the US had carried out “major combat operations” in Iran. The Israeli navy later mentioned that round 200 warplanes have been concerned within the assault.

The demise of the Ayatollah will depart a vacuum of energy in Iran after three a long time of rule, with no clear inside successor.

Khamenei was born on April 19, 1939, within the holy metropolis of Mashhad in northeast Iran and raised in a clerical household. His father was a revered scholar and he undertook non secular research at an early age. He would go on to review underneath distinguished clerics, together with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who turned an in depth confidant.

In the Nineteen Sixties and 70s, Khamenei entered the world of politics as a vocal critic of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. He was arrested a number of occasions by authorities forces, earlier than being exiled in 1964.

The Ayatollah performed a key position within the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which led to the substitute of the Imperial State of Iran by the Islamic Republic of Iran.

After the revolution, Khamenei returned to Tehran and have become President of Iran in 1981. That similar yr, he survived an assassination try when a bomb hidden in a tape recorder exploded beside him throughout Saturday prayers on the Abuzar Mosque in Tehran. The assault severely injured his proper arm.

During the Iran-Iraq conflict of the Eighties, Khamenei consolidated his energy and developed shut ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The conflict, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, left deep scars on Iranian society. Estimates of whole casualties vary from 1,000,000 to twice that quantity, on each side.

After the demise of Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s Assembly of Experts chosen Khamenei as Supreme Leader. He went on to rule the nation for thrice longer than his predecessor and profoundly formed Iranian society and its international coverage goals.

The Ayatollah entrenched the system of rule by the “mullahs,” or Shiite Muslim clerics. At the same time, he built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the dominant force in Iran’s military and internal politics.

The Supreme Leader ruthlessly crushed dissent during his long rule and resisted any attempts to give more power to Iran’s parliament.

Huge nationwide protests erupted in 2009 over allegations of vote-rigging following the surprising election victory of conservative candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ahmadinejad was declared the victor with more than 60 percent of the vote, prompting the opposition to reject the result and gather to protest.

Although the protests were peaceful, police and paramilitary groups were deployed to suppress demonstrators. A handful of protesters and members of the opposition were killed. Protests continued for the rest of the year, with hundreds killed or thrown in jail, where many were allegedly subject to torture.

Over the coming decades, the Ayatollah would attempt to turn Iran into an aggressive power, wielding influence across the Middle East and framing the US and Israel as Iran’s principal enemies.

Under his rule, Tehran built and funded a network of proxies across the region including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Israel and Palestine and the Houthi movement in Yemen. The Ayatollah developed a close relationship with Syria’s former president Bashar al-Assad, China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

But it was the rebuilding of Iran’s nuclear programme that would ultimately put the country on a collision course with the west, despite the Ayatollah’s insistence that the regime did not intend to build nuclear weapons.

Ahmadinejad’s successor, centrist cleric Hassan Rouhani, took a less belligerent approach to foreign policy upon his election as President in 2015 and sought to defuse tensions with the west.

In 2015, he struck a cope with the US and western allies to restrict the Iranian nuclear program in return for sanctions aid and different provisions.

But three years later, President Donald Trump would withdraw from the settlement, arguing it didn’t do sufficient to restrain Iran. Sanctions on Tehran prompted vital financial hurt.

In 2020, tensions between Iran and the US elevated considerably after Washington killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike. Tehran launched retaliatory missile strikes on US bases in Iraq.

The Ayatollah confronted a home disaster in 2022, when nationwide protests erupted following the demise of Mahsa Amini whereas in morality police custody. Widespread demonstrations prompted a ruthless crackdown, with arrests and executions of protesters.

The previous 5 years have additionally seen the dismantling of Iran’s proxy community. Hamas’ October 7, 2023, assault on southern Israel introduced a large Israeli retaliation on the Gaza Strip, but in addition prompted the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) to launch a number of operations focusing on Hezbollah in Lebanon.

An even heavier blow to the Ayatollah got here in December 2024 with the autumn of Assad in Syria, when Sunni rebels marched on the capital and eliminated him from energy. Suddenly, a authorities hostile to Iran and Hezbollah was in energy in Damascus.

In June 2025, the US bombed three Iranian nuclear services. The strike got here in assist of Israel’s 12-day conflict on the Islamic republic in June, though the US reportedly proved unsuccessful in destroying Iran’s alleged nuclear weapon’s programme.