What we know about the death of Iranian supreme leader Khamenei

By Tal Shalev, Jeremy Diamond, Abbas Al Lawati, CNN

(CNN) — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader who ruled the country for almost four decades, was killed in Saturday’s joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the country’s state media confirmed Sunday.

“The Supreme Leader of Iran Has Reached Martyrdom,” state broadcaster IRIB reported Sunday morning, hours after Israel and US President Donald Trump announced the supreme leader’s death. The Iranian broadcaster broke down in tears as he read the official statement.

Khamenei was killed “in his office in the household of the leader” while “carrying out his duties” at the time of the attack early on Saturday, state media Fars News Agency reported.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry had earlier insisted that Khamenei, 86, and Iran’s president were both “safe and sound,” but as reports of his death spread, cheers and celebrations could be heard in parts of Tehran.

Confirmation from within Iran of Khamenei’s death appears likely to plunge the Islamic Republic into the most serious crisis since its establishment.

Here’s what we know:

What happened?

Soon after the United States and Israel began joint strikes on Iran on Saturday, Israeli sources told CNN that airstrikes targeted Iran’s top leadership, including Khamenei.

Satellite images from Airbus showed black smoke rising from the supreme leader’s compound in the capital, Tehran. The images appear to show that several buildings in the compound were severely damaged by strikes.

Earlier, as he announced Khamanei’s death his Truth Social platform, Trump described the development as “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.”

Trump said one of the aims of the joint US-Israeli attack was regime change, and he called on the Iranian people to rise up against the government.

However, it was unclear whether such change would result from Khamenei’s death, which appeared likely to usher in hard-line rule by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, experts said.

What led up to this?

Khamenei’s death comes at a time when Iran is arguably at its weakest since he took power in the 1989. Decades of Western sanctions had already left the country isolated and economically battered before US and Israeli strikes in June 2025 dealt his rule a severe blow.

Just six months later, protests that began over economic grievances quickly turned political, spreading across all 31 of the country’s provinces within weeks. The regime responded with a brutal crackdown, killing thousands of protesters and prompting a global outcry, including a threat of intervention from the Trump administration.

That intervention came on Saturday, when Trump said the US military was undertaking a “massive and ongoing operation to prevent this very wicked, radical dictatorship from threatening America and our core national security interests.”

He also called on the Iranian people to “take over your government,” adding that they now “have a president who is giving you what you want, so let’s see how you respond.”

Who could replace Khamenei?

According to Iran’s constitution, an Assembly of Experts would be tasked with appointing a new supreme leader. Until that appointment, an interim three-member council — consisting of the president, the head of the judiciary and a jurist of the country’s Guardian Council — is tasked with carrying out the duties of the leader, according to the Middle East Institute.

Who could lead Iran next remains a mystery, even to those who have removed him. In January, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that “no one knows” who would take over if Khamenei was removed.

“I don’t think anyone can give you a simple answer to what happens next in Iran if the supreme leader and the regime were to fall,” he said.

How are Iranians reacting?

During widespread protests in January, Khamenei was the focus of many demonstrators’ anger. Videos from some protests showed crowds chanting “Death to Khamenei” in direct defiance of his authority, while others called for his removal. The regime employed unprecedented levels of violence, with officials framing the demonstrations as a continuation of an Israeli-American conspiracy against the Islamic Republic.

The protests were the biggest since the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of the religious police in 2022. Those protests were also suppressed with deadly force.

In one video obtained by CNN from an eyewitness in Tehran on Saturday as reports of Khamenei’s death circulated, the voices of two women can be heard chanting, “Death to the Islamic Republic” and “Long Live the shah,” in Farsi, before cheers and whistles erupt.

In a similar video, cheers are heard echoing across a residential neighborhood in the city.

How would this impact the wider Middle East?

Khamenei’s death has the potential to trigger the greatest shift in regional dynamics since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, after which Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched a sweeping campaign to eliminate actors hostile to his country across the Middle East — including Iran and its regional proxies.

It’s the second time in less than a century that the United States has acted to remove an Iranian leader from power. In 1953, Mohammad Mossadegh, a secular, democratically elected prime minister, was overthrown in an Iranian army coup backed by the CIA and British intelligence after he nationalized the country’s oil industry. That event restored Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to the throne and, after the monarch was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution, played a central role in the Islamic Republic’s anti-US narrative. It regularly cited by Khamenei as a symbol of US imperialism and the reason for his distrust of the West.

Iran is home to a diverse population of more than 90 million, including Persians, Azeris, Arabs, Baloch and Kurds. Under Khamenei’s decades-long rule, the Islamic Republic largely managed to contain civil and ethnic unrest.

But with no clear successor, his death would raise serious concerns about the stability of Iran, as well as the wider region, with potential consequences for the global economy.

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