The moment an Iranian state television presenter broke down in tears on Saturday morning said everything that words could not. With other voices audible crying off-screen, the newsreader told viewers that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had, in a translated phrase from the broadcast, "tasted the drink of martyrdom and joined the sublime heavenly kingdom of God." It was an announcement that changed the Middle East irrevocably.
On 28 February 2026, Ali Khamenei, the second supreme leader of Iran, was killed in a joint airstrike operation by the United States and Israel. Iranian state television and the state-run IRNA news agency announced the 86-year-old's death early Sunday, hours after US and Israeli officials had already declared the strike a success. Khamenei was killed while in his office, with Iranian state media reporting that "the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran was martyred at his workplace in the Beit Rahbari."
A senior US defence official confirmed that Khamenei was dead, along with five to ten other top Iranian leaders who had been meeting at the compound 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, a close adviser to Khamenei. Khamenei's daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law, and son-in-law were also killed in the strikes, according to Iranian state media.
The strikes came in the wake of failed talks between Washington and Tehran, as Trump pressured Iran to commit to abandoning its pursuit of weapons-grade uranium. A senior US official said American strikes were focused on Iran's missile programme and missile launchers, while Israeli strikes targeted both eliminating senior Iranian officials and the missile programme. President Donald Trump announced Khamenei's death on his Truth Social platform, saying it gave Iranians their "greatest chance" to "take back" their country.
A Power Vacuum With No Clear Answer
Khamenei had been Iran's supreme leader since 1989, succeeding the founder of post-shah Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who steered the country's 1979 revolution. 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. His killing after decades in power appeared certain to create a significant leadership vacuum, given the absence of a known successor and because the supreme leader had final say on all major policies.
Iran moved quickly to address the void. As reported by 7News, National Security Adviser Ali Larijani convened an emergency leadership meeting on Sunday to begin the process of appointing a new supreme leader. Khamenei's 56-year-old son emerged as a potential candidate after reportedly surviving the attack, though Israeli sources confirmed his sister was killed in the strike. Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera that Iran "has a plan" in place and that "there will probably be a council that will be set up to run the country. It may already have been running the country, as far as we know."
Iran Strikes Back
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps pledged revenge and said it had launched attacks on 27 bases hosting US troops in the Middle East, as well as Israeli military facilities in Tel Aviv. The conflict damaged air hubs, rocked densely populated areas and disrupted oil shipments. Saturday's strikes on Iran targeted 24 provinces, killing at least 201 people, according to Iranian media reports citing the Red Crescent.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said that Iran viewed revenge as its "legitimate right and duty," and that the killing of the supreme leader was a declaration of open war. 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."
Divided World, Divided Iran
The international response revealed deep fractures. China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi called the US-Israeli attack "unacceptable" and condemned the "blatant killing of a sovereign leader and the incitement of regime change," warning that China was highly concerned the situation "may be pushed into a dangerous abyss." Russian President Vladimir Putin offered his condolences over what he called a killing committed "in cynical violation of all norms of human morality and international law," as reported by 7News.
Closer to home, Australia urged its citizens not to travel to Israel, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain due to military strikes, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Sunday. Football officials offered "full support and assistance" to the Iranian women's team in Australia for the Women's Asian Cup, with Iran's 26-strong squad having arrived on the Gold Coast just days before the strikes killed their country's supreme leader.
As his death was confirmed, many Iranian civilians went out to celebrate in the streets. Supporters of Khamenei, however, mourned his death near the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, with videos showing people crying and wailing, and photographs showing Iranians holding portraits of him in Enqelab Square in Tehran. It was a reminder that Iran, like any country whose leader has governed for nearly four decades, contains profound internal contradictions that no single strike can resolve.
The Harder Questions
Proponents of the operation point to Khamenei's record: he held power since 1989, overseeing the violent suppression of dissent. Iran has been repeatedly accused by rights groups of widespread human rights abuses, including torture, imprisonment of dissidents and deadly crackdowns on protests. That history gives legitimacy to arguments that the world, and Iranians themselves, may be better off without him.
But the legal and strategic questions are harder to dismiss. US lawmakers were divided in their responses, with some praising decisive action against Tehran's nuclear ambitions while others condemned the attacks as unauthorised and potentially illegal. The strikes, launched without congressional approval, prompted Democrats to call for an urgent vote on a war powers resolution. Pope Leo XIV called for an immediate end to hostilities, warning against a "spiral of violence" becoming "an irreparable abyss," as reported by 7News.
The killing of a head of state in a military strike, whatever that leader's record, sets a precedent that few Western democracies have been willing to endorse openly. The UN Charter framework, the laws of armed conflict, and the basic architecture of international order all rest on norms that this operation has stress-tested in ways that will take years to assess. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has so far offered a measured travel warning rather than a public legal position, reflecting the difficulty even allied governments face in responding to an action they were not briefed on in advance.
What emerges from the rubble in Tehran, literally and figuratively, will shape the region for a generation. Whether this becomes the liberation that some Iranians are celebrating in the streets or a wound that radicalises the next chapter of the Islamic Republic's history is a question that no missile, however precise, can answer.