Khamenei killed in precise, large-scale Israeli operation: IDF

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was targeted in a “precise, large-scale operation,” and the elimination of the leader of the “terror axis” has brought to an end a “decades-long chapter,” the IDF said on Sunday. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) formally announced that it killed Khamenei in an airstrike in Tehran on Saturday and shared details of the attack.

Israel and the US launched joint strikes on Iran early on Saturday, including attacks on “dozens of military targets” carried out as part of a “wide, coordinated, and joint offensive” against the (Iranian) regime aimed at eliminating existential threats to the State of Israel over time.

On Sunday, the Israeli army said in a statement: “Ali Khamenei was targeted in a precise, large-scale operation carried out by the Israeli Air Force, guided by accurate IDF intelligence, while he was in his central leadership compound in the heart of Tehran, where he was together with additional senior officials.”

Khamenei, who served as the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic since 1989, “was directly responsible for the violent repression of Iranian citizens for many years,” it said.

“Khamenei was the architect of the plan to destroy the State of Israel and was known as the ‘head of the Iranian octopus,’ extending its arms throughout the Middle East and to the borders of the State of Israel,” the IDF stated.

Foremost among them was the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah terror organisation, it said.

“The Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime was responsible for terrorist attacks against the State of Israel, and the blood of many civilians from around the world was on his hands,” the IDF stressed.

This has “brought to an end a decades-long chapter with the elimination of the leader of the Iranian terror axis,” the Israeli army emphasised.

“His elimination joins a series of eliminations of senior members of the terror axis carried out by the IDF during the war,” the statement added.

Israel has come under massive missile fire since the US-Israel jointly started their operation against Iran on Saturday.