By NEXTER
Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed at his office in the Israeli-US attack.
A 40-day mourning period for the longtime Iranian leader has been announced.
US President Donald Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform earlier in the day that 86-year-old Khamenei was killed in the joint US-Israeli strikes, which began early on Saturday.
“He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do,” Trump wrote.
“This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country,” he said. “Hopefully, the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots.”
While Iranian authorities have long planned for the possible killing of Khamenei in the event of a war with the US and Israel, his assassination injects new uncertainty into an unfolding conflict that has already spurred concerns that fighting could escalate and expand further.
Khamenei has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, succeeding the founder of the post-shah Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who steered Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera that Iran “has a plan” in place in the event that Khamenei’s death is confirmed.
“There will probably be a council that will be set up to run the country. It may already have been running the country, as far as we know,” she said.
