JERUSALEM – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Saturday that joint Israeli-U.S. military operations may have resulted in the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, though he stopped short of definitively confirming the leader’s fate.
Speaking in a recorded statement, Netanyahu declared that morning strikes had targeted Khamenei’s residential compound. “This morning we destroyed the compound of the tyrant Khamenei,” the Israeli leader stated, describing the Iranian leader as someone who had “dispatched terrorism across the world, made his own people miserable, and worked constantly and tirelessly on a program to annihilate the state of Israel” over more than three decades.
Netanyahu indicated that evidence suggests the Iranian leader may not have survived the assault. “There are many signs that this tyrant is no longer. This morning we eliminated senior officials in the ayatollahs’ regime, Revolutionary Guards commanders, senior figures in the nuclear programme – and we will continue. In the next few days, we will hit thousands more targets of the terror regime,” he stated in the video message.
The strikes reportedly targeted multiple high-ranking Iranian officials beyond Khamenei, including Revolutionary Guard leadership and key figures involved in Iran’s nuclear development program.
