By Benedict Smith

 

LONDON, 01 March. - (ANA) - For a brief moment last year, Ali Khamenei’s life hung in the balance.

 

Israeli officials had a fleeting opportunity to assassinate the Ayatollah during the 12-Day War with Iran. Ultimately, it was Donald Trump who stayed their hand and forced Iran and Israel to strike an uneasy truce.

 

Eight months later, as negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes stalled, the US president ran out of patience – and Khamenei ran out of time.

 

Iranian state media confirmed Khamenei was killed at a meeting alongside at least five other senior regime figures in central Tehran on Saturday morning, when Israeli forces dropped dozens of bombs on his compound.

 

Simultaneous strikes took place in at least two other locations across the city in an attempt to cut off the head of the snake.

 

Footage verified by The Telegraph shows plumes of smoke rising high over Tehran from the wreckage of Khamenei’s office and compound, thick enough to block out the sun.

 

Satellite images show much of the building had been reduced to rubble, from which the once Supreme Leader’s body, riddled with shrapnel, was reportedly dragged.

 

Both Mr Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, are said to have been shown pictures of his corpse.

 

Khamenei had become increasingly reclusive since his brush with death last year: even his posts on social media had become sporadic.

 

And the bunker in his compound lies so deep that the lift is said to take more than five minutes to descend to it. Opportunities would have been rare, but his enemies only needed one.

 

Israel and the US were forced to rush their plans when they saw the chance to decapitate the Iranian regime.

 

In retrospect, it seems naive for the regime’s top figures to concentrate in just a couple of locations, particularly when the US has amassed the largest military force in the Middle East since the Iraq War.

 

They weren’t expecting an attack at about 8.10am local time (4.40am UK). One senior defence official described it as a “massive, wildly bold daytime attack” that “hit the senior leaders right out of the gate”.

 

And the regime was caught off-guard on a “Saturday morning during Ramadan and on Shabbat in the daytime”, the official told Fox News.

 

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest, which made action from the Israeli side unlikely. And observant Muslims have been fasting from dawn to sunset for more than a week during Ramadan.

 

As a result, the official continued, there was a “deliberate decision to accelerate the timeline” of the strike.

 

 

 

 

Israel also reportedly had support from an unlikely partner: Saudi Arabia.

 

Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, made multiple private phone calls to Mr Trump over the past month pushing for a US attack, according to The Washington Post.

 

Despite his public support for a diplomatic solution, in talks with the US, the crown prince reportedly said that Iran would become stronger and more dangerous if Washington did not strike immediately.

 

This view was reinforced by Prince Salman’s brother and Saudi Arabia’s defence minister, Khalid bin Salman, who met US officials and warned about the risks of not attacking Iran.

 

A senior figure in the Trump administration has also claimed the president’s hand was forced because Iran was preparing a pre-emptive attack. At least one intelligence source has denied the claim, however.

 

The CIA, meanwhile, had been tracking the Ayatollah for months, learning his locations and patterns, people familiar with the operation told the New York Times.

 

The American agency learned of the Saturday meeting and, critically, that Khamenei would be present. The CIA passed this intelligence to Israel.

 

On this basis, the US and Israel adjusted the timing of their attack and struck on Saturday morning in broad daylight.

 

Initially, Iran’s leadership had claimed the Ayatollah had been moved safely out of Tehran. Abbas Araghchi, the foreign affairs minister, had claimed he was still alive – “as far as I know”.

 

It was not to be. Khamenei had been saved last year by Mr Trump’s intervention and survived an assassination bomb plot in 1981 that essentially paralysed his right arm. Now he was out of luck.

 

Iranian state media only bent to the inevitable and admitted the Supreme Leader’s death in the early hours of Sunday, local time.

 

Before that, as rumours spread about Khamenei’s fate, it fell to Mr Trump to confirm Khamenei’s death and eulogise him as “one of the most evil people in history”.

 

“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,” he wrote on social media.

 

“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.”

 

 

 

 

Precisely what tracking systems Mr Trump was referring to is, as yet, unclear. Some have speculated there was a spy within the Ayatollah’s inner circle who would eventually bring him down.

 

The US has a “wide variety of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that could have been used to track Khamenei”, said Ryan Brobst, a deputy director at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies.

 

He told The Telegraph: “These include aerial and space-based surveillance capabilities, signals and electronic intelligence, communications intercepts, as well as human intelligence.”

 

Mr Trump’s statement suggested that although the US had kept the Ayatollah in its sights, it was Israel that finally pulled the trigger.

 

That appears to tally with briefings from officials on both sides, who have said that the US focused its waves of Tomahawk missiles, HIMARS rockets and drones on military targets as part of “Operation Epic Fury”, while Israel hit missile depots and officials.

 

Israel also used a range of technological tricks to strike a humiliating blow against the Iranian regime to coincide with the strikes.

 

As part of a wave of cyberattacks, a popular Muslim prayer app, BadeSaba Calendar, was hacked to encourage members of the military to defect and join the “liberation forces”. The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), a state news agency, was hijacked to publish stories about the “crippling blow” inflicted on the authorities.

 

Even as Iranian officials continued to deny the Supreme Leader’s death, there was a hint for followers on his social media page.

 

Its last post featured the image of a cloaked figure brandishing a short, fork-tongued Middle Eastern sword known as a Zulfiqar. The weapon is associated with Ali ibn Abi Talib, a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed, who was assassinated in 661.

 

“In the name of Nami Haider”, reads the caption, translated from Persian. “Peace be upon him.”

 

And immediately following reports of Khamenei’s assassination, his top aide Ali Larijani vowed revenge.

 

“We will make the Zionist criminals and the shameless Americans regret their actions,” he said. “The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hellish international oppressors.”

 

There have been rumours about Khamenei’s ill health for well over a decade. But the 86-year-old’s death was an important blow to the Iranian regime.

 

 

 

 

Moreover, Israel claims to have effectively dismantled the country’s military leadership.

 

On Saturday, it released a kill list, which included the names of Mohammad Pakpour, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Ali Shamkhani, the secretary of the Iranian security council, and Aziz Nasirzadeh, the defence minister.

 

Iran’s state news agency, Fars, later the same day announced the death of the Supreme Leader’s daughter, son-in-law and grandchild following an Israeli strike on Tehran.

 

The question now is what comes after Khamenei, who had been Iran’s chief cleric for about three-quarters of the regime’s existence, taking power just 10 years after the fall of the Shah in 1979.

 

Before his death, the CIA assessed that he could be replaced by hardline IRGC figures if assassinated, according to Reuters.

 

Other figures have claimed that while the IRGC was unswervingly loyal to Khamenei, they would not back his successors in the same way, allowing the US to exploit cracks in the regime.

 

And Mr Trump has urged the public to rise up and take advantage of the power vacuum, warning it may be their only chance for generations. “This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country,” he said on Saturday.

 

Whichever turns out to be true, Iran is reeling. Ali Khamenei was only its second Supreme Leader. Perhaps he will be its last.   - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/01 March 2026 - - -