Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran
US President Donald Trump announced on Saturday night that Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was killed in the offensive launched on the country by the United States and Israel. The Iranian agencies IRNA and Fars confirmed the ayatollah’s death.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khameneidied in the attacks launched this Saturday by the US and Israel, which targeted Iranian military and government installations.
The news was announced by the President of the USA, Donald Trumpin one on the social network Social Truth.
“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in history, is dead“, Trump wrote in the publication.
“This is not just justice for the people of Iran, but for all the great Americans and for those from many countries around the world who were killed or maimed by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty bandits“, but there is no post Donald Trump.
“This is the greater chance for the Iranian people recover your country. We are hearing that many of their members in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Armed Forces and other security forces and police no longer want to fight and are seeking immunity,” Trump added.
“We hope that Revolutionary Guard Islamic State and Police unite peacefully with Iranian patriots and work together as a unit to bring the country back to the greatness it deserves.”
According to Donald Trump, “not only with the death of Khamenei, but the country was, in just one day, largely destroyed and even razed“.
“The heavy and precise bombings, however, will continue uninterrupted throughout the week or as long as necessary to achieve our objective of peace throughout the middle east and indeed the world!”, concluded the North American head of state.
The Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had also stated on Saturday night that there were many signs to suggest that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may have been killed in attacks on Iran.
“This morning we destroyed the tyrant Khamenei’s compound“, Netanyahu said in a video statement, adding that, “for more than 30 years, Khamenei sent terrorism all over the worldmade his own people miserable and worked constantly and tirelessly on a program to annihilate the State of Israel.”
“There are many signs that this tyrant is no more. This morning we eliminated senior officials in the ayatollah regime, commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, top figures in the nuclear program — and we will continue. In the coming days, we will attack thousands more targets of the terrorist regime,” said Netanyahu.
The ayatollah’s death was however confirmed, this evening, by the Iranian state agencies IRNA and Fars, which said that the Iranian government decreed 40 days of mourning in the country.
At 05:00 local time (01:30 Lisbon), a presenter from Iranian state television Announced, in tears, the death of Khameneiwhile photos and archive images were transmitted with a black band on the screen as a sign of mourning.
Iranian television did not specify under what circumstances the ayatollah’s death occurred, didn’t even mention the attacks Israelis and Americans on Saturday against his residence in Tehran.
Far from being Supreme
The death of Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86 years oldis a devastating blow to the Islamic Republicwhich he had led since 1989, a decade after he rose to prominence in the theocratic revolution that overthrew the Iranian monarchy and shook the Middle East, the agency says.
Inveterate adversary of the WestKhamenei crushed domestic opposition and supported “proxy wars” throughout the region, with the aim of making their country a respected and feared state.
He led a regime that, for yearscurtailed the rights of its citizens to organize and express themselves freely, and that, according to human rights groups,discriminated against women and minoritiess.
The repression that put an end to the January protests killed thousands of peopleafter the security forces opened fire about the protesters. Some observers estimate the death toll in the tens of thousands, notes the .
Khamenei had previously survived external pressure, but even before Saturday’s attack, he faced most serious crisis of his 36 years of governmentwhile trying prolong negotiations with the United States over the Iranian nuclear program.
In recent months, he ordered the deadliest repression since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, stating that anyone who participated in protests across the country — initially against rising prices — “should be put in their place”.
Khamenei refused to even discuss renouncing the missiles, which Iran viewed as the the only deterrent factor he had left in the face of an Israeli attack — an intransigence that may have contributed to the air strikes that Iran was the target of.
As U.S. air and naval forces massed in the region, Khamenei’s calculations were based on a character shaped by revolution, by years of turmoil and war with Iraq, by decades of confrontation with the U.S., and by a relentless accumulation of power.
At the beginning of his term, Khamenei was often devalued as a weak leader and an unlikely successor of the founder of the Islamic Republic, the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini.
After a long struggle to emerge from your mentor’s shadowwas through the construction of a formidable security apparatus devoted exclusively to the person who ended up imposing himself.
Khamenei always distrusted the Westparticularly from the USA, often accusing them of wanting to overthrow him. In a speech with a habitually combative tone after the January protests, he blamed Donald Trump for the disturbances: “we consider the criminal american president for the casualties, the damage and the defamation he inflicted on the Iranian people.”
However, despite its ideological rigidity, showed willingness to lendr when the survival of the Islamic Republic was at stake.
The concept of “heroic flexibility“, first mentioned by Khamenei in 2013, allowed tactical compromises to advance his objectives, mirroring the Khomeini’s decision in 1988 to accept a ceasefire after eight years of war with Iraq.
In recent years, in moments of increasing pressure, Khamenei has repeatedly turned to the (IRGC) and the Basija paramilitary force with hundreds of thousands of volunteers, to stifle dissent, which crushed the protests that erupted following the re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2009, amid accusations of electoral fraud.
It’s 2022, Khamenei was equally relentless in the arrest, imprisonment or execution of demonstrators protesting the death in custody of the young woman. AND it was once again the Guards and the Basij who repressed the most recent wave of protests in January.
Its power was also largely due to the financial empire parastatal known as Setad, under Khamenei’s direct control. Valued at tens of billions of dollars, it grew enormously during his term, investing billions in the Revolutionary Guards.
Scholars outside Iran have painted a portrait of a secretive ideologue tormented by fear of betrayalan anxiety fueled by an assassination attempt in June 1981, with a bomb hidden in a tape recorder that paralyzed his right arm.
Khamenei himself suffered severe tortureaccording to his official biography, in 1963, when, at the age of 24, he completed his first of many prison terms for political activities during the reign of the shah.
After the Revolution, as deputy minister of defenseKhamenei strengthened ties with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the war with Iraq from 1980 to 1988, which cost a million people their lives on both sides.
Won the presidency with the support of Khomeinibut was a surprising choice as successor when the supreme leader passed away, lacking both his popular appeal and his superior clerical credentials.
Second Karim Sadjadpouranalista do Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, esse “accident of history” had transformed a “weak president into a initially weak supreme leaderand then one of the five most powerful Iranians of the last 100 years.”
