IDF says Khamenei killed in ‘precise, large-scale’ Israeli operation

Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent

People watch as smoke rises on the horizon after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, February 28, 2026. (AP)
People watch as smoke rises on the horizon after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, February 28, 2026. (AP)

The IDF officially announces that it killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in an airstrike in Tehran yesterday.

“Ali Khamenei was targeted in a precise, large-scale operation carried out by the Israeli Air Force, guided by accurate IDF intelligence, while he was in his central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran, where he was together with additional senior officials,” the military says in a statement.

The military says Khamenei, who served as the supreme leader since 1989, “was directly responsible for the violent repression of Iranian citizens for many years.”

“Khamenei was the architect of the plan to destroy the State of Israel and was known as the ‘head of the Iranian octopus,’ extending its arms throughout the Middle East and to the borders of the State of Israel. Foremost among them was the Hezbollah terror organization. The supreme leader of the Iranian regime was responsible for terrorist attacks against the State of Israel, and the blood of many civilians from around the world was on his hands,” the IDF says.

The IDF says it has “brought to an end a decades-long chapter with the elimination of the leader of the Iranian terror axis.”

“His elimination joins a series of eliminations of senior members of the terror axis carried out by the IDF during the war,” the statement adds.

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