Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei killed after brutal, decades-long reign

Iranian state television confirmed early Sunday morning, Iran Standard Time, that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader for nearly four decades, has died. He was 86.

Khamenei was a constant in the world’s most turbulent region: In power for nearly 37 years, and only the second person to hold the title of supreme leader since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, his reign was characterized by near-total control and repression of his critics and dissidents. And he harbored — and fomented — deep disdain for both the U.S. and Israel.

In 2015, during a period of relatively calm relations with the U.S. centered on a nuclear agreement reached in the waning months of the Obama administration, Khamenei still defended the “death to America” slogan chanted by Iranian student protesters.

“‘Death to America’ does not mean death to the people of America. The people of America are like other peoples,” he told a student gathering, according to remarks recorded on his official English-language site. “It means death to American policies and to arrogance.”

Khamenei was an architect of the coalition of militant groups informally called the “Axis of Resistance” — including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and Hamas in Gaza, as well as smaller groups in Iraq — that are aligned against the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia to protect Iran’s influence in the region. Under Khamenei’s leadership, Iran cultivated an alliance with Russia and good relations with China to counter U.S. influence.

Prior to becoming supreme leader, Khamenei served two terms as president under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic who took power in the 1979 revolution. When Khomeini died in 1989, Khamenei — a Shiite cleric, but not necessarily among the highest-ranking of them — outmaneuvered a field of other would-be successors, according to Ali Kadivar, an associate professor of sociology and international studies at Boston College, who wrote a treatise on Khamenei’s origins for the Project on Middle East Political Science.

Khamenei held on to power for decades — through periodic internal uprisings and the presidencies of hard-liners and moderates, and in the face of international sanctions that strained daily life for Iranians — by claiming Khomeini’s mantle as a fierce defender of Iran’s oppressive regime. He preached a hard line against protests that erupted after the 2022 death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in custody after her arrest by Iran’s notorious morality police — an arrest reportedly for not properly covering her hair under Iran’s strict Islamic dress codes.

Earlier this year, Khamenei accused anti-government protesters of acting on behalf of President Donald Trump in the mass demonstrations that began in Tehran in late December, deriding the participants as “vandals.” He also accused Trump of “appalling slander against the Iranian people” and blamed him for casualties and damages resulting from the protests.

In fact, it was Khamenei who ordered the government to use deadly force to quell the protests. The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which cross-checks collected data with people on the ground, estimates that more than 7,000 people died during the demonstrations from December through this month. Almost all were protesters, the group says, but the total includes children and other bystanders as well as police and government forces.

Trump previously called for new leadership in Iran, calling Khamenei “a sick man” who was “guilty of … the complete destruction of the country and the use of violence at levels never seen before.”

Trump has encouraged Iranian citizens to rise up again but has not said who or what form of government he thinks should take Khamenei’s place.

It’s not clear whether anyone was immediately in line to succeed Khamenei. He was reportedly grooming former Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as his successor, but Raisi died in a helicopter crash in 2024.

As reports of Khamenei’s death spread within Iran, according to residents in Tehran and Karaj, some people took to the streets, honking horns, whistling, clapping and chanting, “Death to Khamenei!”

Leda Joy Abkenari and Julia Jester contributed to this report.

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Khamenei’s age. He was 86.