Black smoke rises from the rubble of Ali Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. Officially, the Supreme Leader’s fate remains unknown—no televised address, no formal communiqué, only Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi’s cautious assurance that Ayatollah Khamenei and President Masoud Pezeshkian are, “as far as I know, alive.” Israeli intelligence, for its part, assesses that the opening strikes, launched by the United States and Israel this morning, likely killed the ayatollah.
Whether dead or sheltering deep underground, his status has changed irrevocably. He is now a target rather than a negotiating partner. President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu have moved from a strategy of coercion to one of decapitation.
