Iran Confirms Khamenei Died in U.S.-Israeli Strikes and Names a Council

Iranian state media confirmed on Sunday that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the U.S. and Israeli strikes that began on Saturday, ending more than 37 years of rule. Al Jazeera reported that state media said Iran had begun 40 days of national mourning, and that President Masoud Pezeshkian declared seven days of public holidays.

President Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday that Khamenei “is dead,” Xinhua reported. Iranian media reported that members of Khamenei’s family, including a daughter, a son-in-law and a grandson, were also killed, Al Jazeera said.

Al Jazeera reported that a three-person body made up of the president, the judiciary chief and a jurist will temporarily assume leadership. Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, said on state television that such a body would be formed, according to Xinhua, which reported that it would consist of Pezeshkian, Judiciary Chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei and Ayatollah Alireza Arafi, a jurist selected by the Expediency Discernment Council. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a new supreme leader could be chosen “within a day or two,” CBS News reported.

Khamenei, who was born in Mashhad in 1939, survived an assassination attempt in June 1981 that paralyzed his right arm, was elected president that October and served until 1989, when he was named supreme leader after the death of Ruhollah Khomeini, Xinhua noted.

Reuters witnesses reported people in the streets of Tehran, Karaj and Isfahan, according to Al Jazeera. In Karachi, Pakistan, protesters set fire to and smashed windows at the U.S. consulate, according to footage Al Jazeera verified, and in Baghdad demonstrators confronted security forces in the Green Zone. The Iranian cabinet called the killing a “brutal attack by the criminal US government and the sinister Israeli regime,” Xinhua reported.

The fighting did not stop with the announcement. Al Jazeera said the Revolutionary Guards claimed strikes on 27 bases hosting U.S. troops in the region and on Israeli military sites in Tel Aviv. Iranian state media, citing the Red Crescent, reported at least 201 deaths across 24 provinces, including at least 148 in a strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab that was still rising, Al Jazeera said. These figures and claims come from Iranian authorities and have not been independently confirmed.

Trump warned Iran on Sunday that it would be hit with a “force that has never been seen before” if it retaliated, Al Jazeera reported. Harlan Ullman of the Killowen Group cautioned that the U.S. may have made a “big mistake,” saying that “decapitation only works when you get all the leaders.” What follows in Tehran remained an open question on Sunday.