Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, has reportedly died following an Israeli airstrike in Tehran.
According to Fox News, Israeli officials confirmed that Khamenei’s compound and offices in central Tehran were destroyed in a targeted operation carried out early Saturday.
Commenting on his leadership style, Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News:
“Khamenei was the contemporary Middle East’s longest-serving autocrat. He did not get to be that way by being a gambler.
“Khamenei was an ideologue, but one who ruthlessly pursued the preservation and protection of his ideology, often taking two steps forward and one step back,”
The reported development follows earlier strikes launched by the Israeli military and the United States against Iran on Saturday.
Born on April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, eastern Iran, Khamenei was a key Islamist figure in the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-backed Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.