From Tokyo: There is a moment, in the hours after a tyrant falls, when the world holds its breath. Not out of grief, but out of the sudden, vertiginous awareness that the future, which once felt fixed in place by fear, is now open. That moment arrived this weekend across the Iranian diaspora, and in parts of Iran itself, as news spread that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been killed in joint US-Israeli airstrikes on his compound in Tehran.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, was killed in a joint American-Israeli operation targeting Iran on Saturday, Iran's state media confirmed. Decades of Western sanctions had already left the country isolated and economically battered before American and Israeli strikes in June 2025 dealt his rule a severe blow, and new attacks launched on 28 February specifically targeted Khamenei and other top leaders, devastating his residence and offices in Tehran.
Israel's military said that top Iranian security officials were among those killed, including the country's defence minister, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the secretary of the Iranian Security Council. Saturday's strikes hit 24 provinces, killing at least 201 people, according to Iranian media reports citing the Red Crescent. The scale of the operation reflected months of planning. The US government did not brief allies on the details of the planned American and Israeli military action, multiple diplomatic sources confirmed.
The supreme leader holds ultimate authority over all branches of government, the military and the judiciary, while also acting as the country's spiritual leader. Khamenei had been Iran's supreme leader since 1989, succeeding the founder of post-shah Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who steered Iran's 1979 revolution. His removal leaves a void without precedent in the Islamic Republic's history: a state designed around a single, supreme clerical authority now faces that question of succession under active bombardment.
Witnesses reported loud cheers echoing across parts of Tehran as residents took to their windows to applaud and play celebratory music after reports of Khamenei's death spread. The reaction was far from uniform. Iranian state TV confirmed reports that Khamenei was killed in Israeli-US strikes and declared a 40-day mourning period. Pro-regime crowds gathered in Tehran to mourn the death of the supreme leader. The contrast captures the profound division within Iranian society after nearly four decades of clerical rule.
Iranians worldwide celebrated the strikes that killed Khamenei, with dancing, chanting, and flag-waving in cities from London to Sydney. In Canberra, more than 100 Iranian-Australians gathered outside the Iranian embassy, dancing, cheering, playing music and waving flags. Similar gatherings emerged in Brisbane and Adelaide, with more community celebrations throughout the evening in Melbourne and Sydney. Siamak Ghahreman, president of the Iranian Community Organisation, said major parts of the community he had been in contact with were "happy about what has happened".
In Melbourne, a group gathered at Federation Square in the CBD on Sunday morning to celebrate the death of Khamenei, with attendees saying they hoped the strikes would ultimately result in the collapse of Iran's government and a more democratic system. The celebrations were not universal within Australia's Iranian community. At Sydney's Town Hall, a demonstration organised by a group of Iranian leftists and their supporters was held to protest the strikes, with one community member identified only as Seema saying she "cannot celebrate this death of Khamenei".
Australia's political response was notably firm. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters that Khamenei "was responsible for the regime's ballistic missile and nuclear programme, support for armed proxies and its brutal acts of violence and intimidation against its own people", adding that "he was responsible for orchestrating attacks on Australian soil" and that "his passing will not be mourned". Albanese also confirmed Australia played no part in the strikes and had no prior knowledge of them. Opposition leader Angus Taylor described the confirmation of Khamenei's death as "welcome news", thanking the "decisiveness and moral fortitude" of the US and Israel, calling his death a "great setback for tyranny and leap forward for the cause of freedom".
The bipartisan support in Canberra sits alongside genuine and serious concerns about what follows. Those concerns are shared across the international community, and they deserve careful examination, not dismissal. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told an emergency meeting of the Security Council that he deeply regretted that an opportunity for diplomacy had been "squandered", warning that "military action carries the risk of igniting a chain of events that no one can control in the most volatile region of the world". China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the US-Israeli attack "unacceptable" and condemned the "blatant killing of a sovereign leader", arguing that the actions "violate international law and the basic norms of international relations" and calling for the immediate cessation of military action.
These are not trivial objections. The targeted killing of a head of state, however repressive, sets a precedent with consequences that stretch well beyond Iran. Russia, China, Brazil, and Pakistan have condemned the strikes. Iran's retaliatory missile and drone attacks have already hit multiple countries, including Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait, raising fears the conflict could trigger a wider regional war. Iran claims one attack killed more than 100 girls at an elementary school near a military base. Whatever one thinks of the strategic logic of the strikes, civilian casualties of that kind demand accountability and honest scrutiny.
Rather than a managed transition, succession is unfolding under sustained airstrikes on Iran's nuclear and missile infrastructure and amid deep public exhaustion after years of sanctions, repression and economic decline. The question confronting Tehran is no longer simply who will succeed Khamenei, but whether the Islamic Republic in its present form can withstand the shock. Under Iran's constitution, the authority to appoint a new supreme leader rests with the Assembly of Experts, an 88-member clerical body. When the office falls vacant, a provisional council consisting of the president, the head of the judiciary and a cleric chosen by the Guardian Council assumes temporary charge of government, before the Assembly convenes to select a permanent successor, requiring a two-thirds majority.
One of Khamenei's sons, Mojtaba, a 56-year-old Shiite cleric, has emerged as a potential candidate, though a father-to-son transfer of power could spark anger not only among Iranians already critical of clerical rule, but among supporters of the system. Regional analysts say there is no obvious successor poised to take control, with experts consistently pointing to one determining factor: whether Iran's coercive institutions, particularly the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, fracture or consolidate.
What Australian observers often miss about Iran is the depth of the division between those who despise the regime and those who, however ambivalently, still see it as the guarantor of order and national identity. Both exist. Both matter to any realistic assessment of what comes next. As one analyst put it, Khamenei's death could result in the regime and its security forces closing ranks in order to survive, or it could serve as the equivalent of a giant cannon blast blowing a hole in a ship, causing the ship to sink. That uncertainty is not weakness; it is an honest acknowledgment of a situation no one fully controls.
For Australia, the stakes are real and rising. Prime Minister Albanese, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Foreign Minister Penny Wong issued a joint statement declaring their support for US action to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while affirming that Australia "stands with the brave people of Iran". Wong notably called for any regime change to be "determined by the people of Iran", even as she backed the strikes. That is a fine line to walk, and the government will need to walk it carefully in the days ahead.
The region is now in its most volatile moment in a generation. The end of a 37-year autocracy, brought about by force rather than by the Iranian people themselves, does not automatically mean a better Iran is coming. History offers few examples of post-strike democracies materialising on demand. What it more reliably produces is a period of chaos, in which the most organised and most ruthless actors tend to prevail. That is the considered view of serious analysts, and it is worth holding alongside the very genuine relief felt by Iranians, at home and in cities like Canberra and Melbourne, who have waited decades for this day. Both things are true at once. That complexity is exactly where sound policy must begin.