Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei Dies at 86 Following Joint US-Israeli Strike

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran as supreme leader for over three decades, died at age 86 following a joint military operation by Israel and the United States. His death raises major questions about Iran's future as the country has declared 40 days of mourning while facing ongoing regional conflicts and domestic unrest.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The man who controlled Iran’s theocratic government for more than 30 years has died following a joint military strike by Israel and the United States. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, built Iran into a regional force while clashing with Western powers over nuclear weapons and brutally suppressing pro-democracy movements at home.

Iranian state television confirmed Khamenei’s death early Sunday morning, hours after President Donald Trump announced that the supreme leader had been eliminated in the coordinated attack.

Khamenei fundamentally transformed Iran’s Islamic Republic after assuming power following Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s death in 1989. While Khomeini was the passionate revolutionary who overthrew the shah and established clerical rule, Khamenei — a more reserved figure with lesser religious standing — was tasked with institutionalizing that revolutionary ideology.

His tenure ultimately lasted much longer than his predecessor’s. Khamenei significantly expanded the influence of Shiite clergy and transformed the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into Iran’s most powerful institution. The Guard evolved into a massive military and economic force, controlling Iran’s missile program and maintaining influence across numerous business sectors.

However, mounting pressures became increasingly difficult to manage. Economic struggles and political oppression sparked larger and more frequent mass demonstrations. Outrage over Mahsa Amini’s 2022 death while in custody for improper hijab wearing triggered nationwide protests against social restrictions. By early January, hundreds of thousands demonstrated across Iran, with many shouting, “Death to Khamenei.”

Khamenei’s response was the most violent suppression in nearly five decades of clerical leadership, as security forces fired on protesters, resulting in thousands of deaths.

Meanwhile, the Middle East conflicts following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 assault on Israel began dismantling Khamenei’s regional “Axis of Resistance” network. For the first time in 2024, Israel and Iran launched direct attacks against each other. Israel struck Iran again in June 2025, with the U.S. joining efforts to target nuclear facilities and eliminate senior military commanders and nuclear experts. Iran responded by launching missiles and drones toward Israel.

Khamenei’s passing creates uncertainty about Iran’s political future.

The Assembly of Experts, an 88-member body of predominantly hardline clerics, will select Khamenei’s successor. However, no obvious replacement has been identified.

During February’s bombing campaign, President Trump urged Iranians to “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.” The country’s direction may largely depend on institutions like the Revolutionary Guard, which has consistently demonstrated readiness to use overwhelming force to maintain control despite growing dissatisfaction among Iran’s 90 million citizens.

“Culturally, the government is bankrupt,” said Mehdi Khalaji, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in 2017. “The ideology of the Islamic Republic did not work at all.”

Saturday’s attack also claimed the lives of Khamenei’s daughter, son-in-law, grandchild, and daughter-in-law, according to the semi-official Fars news agency, citing unnamed sources.

Iran’s leadership has announced 40 days of public mourning and declared a week-long national holiday to honor Khamenei’s death.

Ali Khamenei was born into a religious household in Mashhad, a northeastern holy city that became a center of anti-shah activism during the resistance against Western-backed monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Following the path of many Iranian leaders, he studied under Khomeini at Qom’s seminary south of Tehran during the early 1960s, before Khomeini’s exile to Iraq and France.

Khamenei participated in the anti-shah resistance, experiencing both imprisonment and periods in hiding. When Khomeini returned triumphantly to Iran in February 1979 and declared the Islamic Republic, Khamenei joined the secretive Revolutionary Council. He won election as Iran’s third president in 1981; that same year, a bombing by opposition forces left one of his hands paralyzed.

With his thick-rimmed glasses, Khamenei lacked Khomeini’s intense presence and revolutionary charisma. He also fell well below Khomeini’s religious scholarship, holding only the relatively modest rank of “hojatolislam” in Shiite clerical rankings.

Upon becoming supreme leader after Khomeini’s death, he was immediately elevated to grand ayatollah status at the hierarchy’s peak, though he faced years of skepticism regarding his qualifications.

Khamenei openly acknowledged these concerns with modesty. “I am an individual with many faults and shortcomings and truly a minor seminarian,” he said in his first speech in his new post.

Despite lacking charisma, Khamenei brought stability to Iran after the devastating 1980s conflict with Iraq and maintained power for over three decades — significantly longer than Khomeini.

Conservative supporters viewed him as second only to God in authority. Khamenei established an expanding network of Shiite clerics and government agencies with overlapping responsibilities, positioning himself as the final decision-maker. When Iran debated whether to maintain the Revolutionary Guard after the Iraq war, Khamenei preserved the force and enabled its powerful grip on Iran’s economy. He also employed appointed officials to weaken the civilian government chosen by voters.

During Khamenei’s leadership, Iran completely shifted from traditional warfare to proxy support, creating the “Axis of Resistance” to advance regional objectives. The Lebanese militant organization Hezbollah, formed with Iranian assistance in the 1980s, forced Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and fought Israel to a standstill in the month-long 2006 conflict.

Through Hezbollah, Iran developed a strategy of allying with local militant groups to project influence — often through violence. Iran applied this approach when supporting Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who captured the capital Sanaa in 2014 and maintained control for over a decade in a stalemated conflict in the Arab world’s poorest country — despite facing a Saudi-led coalition and later U.S.-led airstrikes over Red Sea attacks.

Additionally, suspected Iranian-backed militants bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people. Iran was also allegedly connected to the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 U.S. military personnel. Iran denied involvement in both incidents.

Iran became a major beneficiary of the 2003 U.S.-led Iraq invasion, which replaced its primary regional enemy, Saddam Hussein, with a friendly Shiite-dominated government. Iranian-supported militias conducted a brutal insurgency against American forces and established themselves within Iraq’s political system.

Khamenei most effectively utilized the Guard’s overseas Quds Force after Sunni extremists from the Islamic State seized large portions of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Guard personnel advised Shiite militias, Iraq’s most effective fighters, and provided essential support to President Assad during Syria’s civil war.

This secured Assad’s position for a decade, until the turmoil following Hamas’ 2023 attack on Israel. Israel devastated Gaza and conducted airstrikes and ground operations that destroyed Hamas, which Iran had armed and funded for years. Israel is widely believed to have assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in a Tehran operation in 2024, further humiliating the Islamic Republic.

Hezbollah saw its members targeted by exploding communication devices and an Israeli campaign eliminated longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. Then in December 2024, rebel forces overthrew Assad in a Syrian offensive, ending five decades of his family’s authoritarian rule.

The supreme leader maintained deep distrust of America, calling it the “Great Satan” even after President Barack Obama took office in 2009, offering dialogue and renewed relations.

He dismissed U.N. sanctions and advanced Iran’s nuclear program, which America and allies claimed concealed a secret weapons project until 2003. Khamenei issued a verbal fatwa, or religious decree, declaring nuclear weapons un-Islamic, but vowed Iran would never abandon what he termed its right to develop peaceful nuclear energy.

Under Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, Tehran agreed to dramatically reduce uranium stockpiles and enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief. However, just three years later, Trump in his first presidency unilaterally withdrew America from the deal, arguing it was insufficient.

Iran has since violated all nuclear deal restrictions and accumulated uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels, now sufficient to pursue multiple nuclear weapons if desired. Diplomatic efforts to restore the agreement under President Joe Biden stalled.

In a March 2011 speech, Khamenei cited overthrown Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who had abandoned his nuclear program years earlier, as an example of why Iran’s nuclear program remained crucial amid Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East.

“Just the way you give a lollipop to a child, Westerners gave ‘incentives’ to them and they gave up everything,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei’s first significant challenge emerged in 1997, when pro-reform politicians gained parliamentary control and cleric Mohammad Khatami won the presidency by a landslide, supported by young voters. The reformists demanded relaxation of strict revolutionary social rules and called for improved international relations, including with America.

Khamenei-supported hardliners moved to restrict the liberal movement, fearing it would eventually demand an end to clerical rule. Khamenei prevented parliament from relaxing media restrictions in an unusually direct intervention. Clerical institutions blocked other key liberal legislation and barred many reformist lawmakers from seeking reelection, ensuring hardliner control returned in 2004 elections.

This paved the way for hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election and his disputed 2009 reelection amid vote-rigging allegations. Mass protests erupted, creating the greatest threat to Iran’s clerical leadership in decades. The Revolutionary Guard, Basij militia, and police launched a crackdown killing dozens and arresting hundreds.

The unrest, and reports of protesters being tortured to death or sexually assaulted in prison, severely damaged Khamenei’s reputation.

As sanctions intensified, popular unrest increased. Economic protests occurred in 2017 and demonstrations escalated in 2019 over government gasoline price increases. The violent crackdown that followed killed over 300 people, according to activists.

While Khamenei struggled to maintain the Islamic Revolution’s ideological purity, Iran’s government largely failed to eliminate Western influence. Satellite dishes, theoretically banned, cover Tehran’s rooftops. Prohibited social media platforms are widely used, even by prominent politicians, despite being blocked.

Protests resumed in 2022 over Amini’s death, a young woman detained for improper hijab wearing according to authorities. More than 500 people died and tens of thousands were arrested when security forces again crushed the demonstrations.

In late December 2025, new economic protests erupted and grew into what appeared to be the largest protest movement ever. Hundreds of thousands nationwide took to the streets, openly demanding the Islamic Republic’s end. Some even chanted for the return of the shah’s son, living in exile since 1979. The crackdown’s brutality shocked Iranians.

With President Trump, Khamenei faced a more aggressive and unpredictable American campaign to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, restoring sanctions.

The two sides nearly went to war after an American drone strike killed Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. At Soleimani’s massive funeral drawing millions to the streets, Khamenei wept over the coffin of the man he once called a “living martyr.” Two days later, the Guard mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner departing Tehran, killing all 176 aboard.

Iran accelerated uranium enrichment back to 60% purity — a short technical step from weapons-grade 90% levels. Still, when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Khamenei resumed negotiations, highlighting the severe impact of sanctions. Iran’s struggling economy entered freefall, worsening domestic unrest.

However, an agreement remained out of reach. In June 2025, Israel and America bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, causing significant damage, though the program’s setback remained unclear.

During January’s nationwide protest crackdown, Trump renewed strike threats, demanding Iran make major negotiating concessions. Three rounds of indirect talks followed. Then came Saturday.