MARCH 1,2026: The 36-year rule of Khamenei built Iran into a powerful anti-U.S. force. He spread Iran’s military sway across the Middle East, while using an iron fist to crush repeated unrest at home.
The death of the 86-year-old cleric comes after decades of failed diplomatic efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme.
At first dismissed as weak and indecisive, Khamenei seemed an unlikely choice for supreme leader after the death of the charismatic Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran.
But Khamenei’s rise to the pinnacle of the country’s power structure afforded him a tight grip over the nation’s affairs.
The Ayatollah criticised Washington throughout his rule.
As a new wave of protests spread through Iran, and as Trump threatened to intervene, Khamenei vowed in January that the country would not “yield to the enemy”.
Khamenei had long denied that Iran’s nuclear programme was aimed at producing an atomic weapon, as the West contended.
As Trump pressed Iran to agree to a new nuclear deal in 2025, Khamenei condemned “the rude and arrogant leaders of America”.
“Who are you to decide whether Iran should have enrichment?” he asked.
Khamenei often denounced “the Great Satan” in speeches, reassuring hardliners for whom anti-U.S. sentiment was at the heart of the 1979 revolution, which forced the last shah of Iran into exile.
Khamenei’s death leaves an Islamic Republic wrestling with uncertainty amid ongoing attacks from Israel and the United States, as well as growing dissent at home, especially among younger generations.
With his large-scale attack on Iran, Trump has seized a legacy-defining moment to demonstrate his readiness to exercise raw U.S. military power.
But in doing so, he is also taking the biggest foreign policy gamble of his presidency, one fraught with risks and unknowns.
The death of Iran’s supreme leader Khamenei marks a major achievement for the operation but also leaves unanswered questions about the future of the Islamic Republic.
Trump has so far provided little explanation to the American public for what could become the biggest U.S. military campaign since Afghanistan and Iraq.
The president, who came to office last year promising to avoid “stupid wars,” has also set out a daunting objective of regime change in Tehran, pushing the idea that air strikes can incite a popular uprising to oust Iran’s rulers.
After Trump announced the death of Khamenei, some Iranian-Americans celebrated.
These photos were taken before Iran’s state media confirmed the supreme leader’s death.
