Iranian Supreme Leader Killed In Airstrike, Leaving Power Vacuum Atop Regime

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who oversaw decades of repressive rule and resistance to the United States, was killed after the U.S. and Israel attacked the Islamist regime, according to President Donald Trump, a move that plunges the country’s future into uncertainty.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump declared on Truth Social. “He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do.”

The death of the ayatollah, who is in his 80’s, leaves a void atop Iran’s Islamist government in the biggest challenge to its nearly 50-year existence. This marks only the second change of a supreme leader after the Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989. Khamenei’s successor is not immediately clear.

The United States and Israel attacked Iran on Saturday in an astonishing joint military operation that could dramatically shift the power dynamics in the Middle East. But killing Khamenei was perhaps the biggest element of what could prove the most dangerous foreign policy gamble yet for a president with an unusually muscular approach to the world.

Trump called Khamenei’s death “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The president, earlier in the day, called on Iranian citizens to seize the opportunity presented by the joint U.S.-Israel operation to retake the country.

Trump green-lit the strikes after the Islamist regime in Tehran failed to meet his expectations in nuclear negotiations. Iran quickly retaliated, firing missiles across the region, where the U.S. has numerous troops in an array of bases.