Israel strikes Khamenei compound amid rumors of assassination

With smoke still billowing over Tehran, one question loomed over the region and Washington alike: Did they get it?

Immediately after the Israeli-American attack, the Israeli Air Force targeted the infrastructure of the senior Iranian leadership, prompting rumors that the Ayatollah Ali KhameneiIran’s 86-year-old Supreme Leader was killed.

Satellite images have shown extensive damage to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s walled compound, which is believed to be his residence and the so-called leadership house. Some parts of the complex appear to be in ruins.

Regional reports indicated that a high-level meeting of Khamenei’s top lieutenants may have been underway when the strike struck. Iran’s semi-official media also reported missiles fired near the Presidential Palace and elsewhere. Leadership sites North of the capital.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei made his first public appearance in weeks amid fresh US threats. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader Credit/Associated Press)

“There are more and more signs that Khamenei is gone,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in Hebrew in an address to the nation on Saturday.

Israeli officials told Fox News Digital they were still assessing the results and said it was too early to confirm the fate of the 86-year-old supreme leader. He did not rule out the possibility that he was murdered.

Iranian officialsHowever, despite what he described as an assassination attempt, the country’s leadership – including Khamenei and President Massoud Pezeshkian – insisted that they remained safe, according to The Guardian. Meanwhile, a spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the BBC that they were not in a position to confirm whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had been removed.

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In this photo released by the official website of Iran’s Supreme Leader’s Office, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stands as an army air force personnel salutes at the start of his meeting, Friday, Feb. 8, 2019, in Tehran, Iran. Khamenei has been defending the “death to America” ​​slogans that are standard fare from anti-US leaders in Iran, and what he calls Iran’s leaders. His people. (Office of Iran’s Supreme Leader via AP)

The long-serving cleric has survived decades of internal turmoil, assassination plots and foreign pressure. He is rarely seen in public without layers of security and is believed to operate through a tightly controlled network of loyalists embedded in Iran’s military, intelligence and political institutions.

In an exclusive Fox News Digital report earlier this week, researchers described how Khamenei operates. A parallel state in Iran Formal government structure.

Kasra Arabi, director of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) research at United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), told Fox News Digital, “Bayt is the hidden nerve center of the regime in Iran… It functions as a state within a state.”

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Smoke rises into the sky after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Wahid Salemi)

Even if Khamenei himself were ousted, Arabi warned, the institutional machinery he built — about 4,000 key staff and a wide network of tens of thousands — could continue to function.

“Even if he is removed, the Bet as an institution enables the Supreme Leader to function,” Arabi said. “Think of the Supreme Leader as an entity, not just a single person.”

This reality complicates the picture.

For decades, Khamenei positioned himself not just as a political leader but as the pinnacle of a system built to withstand shocks — whether protests at home or military pressure abroad.

The 86-year-old cleric has repeatedly faced waves of unrest, including large-scale protests in 2009, 2022 and again in early 2026. Each time, his regime cracked with force, consolidating control rather than fracturing it.

It has also carried out years of covert operations, cyber campaigns and targeted strikes against prominent Iranian figures across the region.

Still, the scale of the latest strike seems unprecedented.

If confirmed dead, Khamenei’s assassination would be the most significant beheading of the Iranian leadership since the 1979 revolution. It will wake up immediately Questions about succession within A system they carefully designed to avoid sudden collapse.

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A man holds a portrait of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iranian protesters demonstrate against US-Israeli strikes on February 28, 2026 in Tehran, Iran. (Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via Reuters)

If he survives, he will cement his reputation for resilience – and underline how difficult it is to destroy the core of Iran’s power structure.

At present, officials say that the assessment is on and the answer to this question may come in the near future.

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