President Donald Trump announced on Feb. 28 that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in joint strikes on Iran.
The president’s declaration came about an hour or so after an Israeli source confirmed Khamenei’s death to USA TODAY. Reuters and CNN had also reported that Khamenei had been killed during the U.S. and Israel joint operation on Feb. 28.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.”
“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” Trump added
Iran’s Foreign Ministry, however, insisted earlier in the day that Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian are “safe and sound.”
Khamenei, 86, had led Iran since 1989. He previously served as the president from 1981 to 1989. He was a close ally of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the country’s 1979 revolution that overthrew the government and founded Iran’s Islamic Republic.
He is credited with creating and giving increasing power to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi had told NBC News Khamenei was still alive “as far as I know.”
“All high ranking officials are alive,” he said. “So everybody is now in its position, and we are handling this situation, and everything is fine.” Aragchi said the nation may have lost “one or two commanders, but that is not a big problem.”
However, in his Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us. As I said last night, ‘Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!'”
Khamenei was elected supreme leader after the death of Ruhollah Khomeini in June 1989. He became the favored successor after Khomeini ousted Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, who had been critical of Khomeini’s policies.
Khomeini came to power and created Iran as a theocratic Islamic republic by overthrowing the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Khamenei had named three senior clerics as candidates to succeed him should he be killed, The New York Times reported in June 2025. He had gone into hiding in a bunker, seeking protection from Israeli air strikes.
Khamenei “appeared frail” after the attacks “and for the first time since assuming his role, he failed to appear at an annual event commemorating the military’s support for Iran’s 1979 revolution,” the Council on Foreign Relations said in a contingency planning memorandum issued in February 2026.
The death of Khamenei “will precipitate only the second leadership change in Iran since the regime’s establishment nearly 50 years ago, and its implications will reverberate across the Middle East and around the world,” the document said.
Khamenei, 86, was born into a clerical family in 1939. He found his calling as a religious leader while in political opposition to Pahlavi, a U.S.-backed autocrat and monarchist who used secret police and torture on his opponents.
According to his official biography, published in 1963, Khamenei himself was tortured age 24 when he served the first of many prison terms for political activities under the shah’s rule.
After the revolution, Khamenei quickly rose through Iran’s religious and political ranks, becoming a deputy defense minister, which brought him close to the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps, a powerful security organization with a vast political and economic power base that extends to Iran’s armed forces, as well as its strategic industries from oil to agriculture.
In 1981, with Khomeini’s support, Khamenei became Iran’s president, the nation’s top elected official. Although the position wields influence over domestic policy and foreign affairs, Iran’s president is ultimately second in rank to the supreme leader.
At age 50, Khamenei became Iran’s supreme leader. He had authority over Iran’s nuclear program and interpreted how Iran’s religious laws and codes were applied.
Since then, he’s been at the heart of Iran’s strategy, which was weakened in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on Israel that resulted in the war in Gaza. Khamenei held power and influence across the Middle East region through a network of militant groups stretching from Gaza to Yemen.