Newsman: President Donald Trump announced “major combat operations” against Iran on Saturday, with massive joint U.S.-Israel strikes attack targeting military and government sites, officials said.
Pres. Trump announced Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is dead, believed to have been killed in the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran. Trump is calling for regime change in Iran.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader of Iran, was killed in the U.S.-Israeli attack on the country Saturday, President Donald Trump said.
“This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS,” Trump said in a social media post.
Iranian state television confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among those killed by airstrikes in Tehran on Saturday. His successor is yet to be named.
President Trump has also indicated he expects his administration will have say over installing new leadership in Iran, but he has not publicly shared a plan for what should happen next and the situation in the country remains volatile.
Trump said new call for regime change in Iran justified by ‘imminent threats’ to US
Iran is responding to the operation with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases and multiple Gulf nations. Israel is also intensifying its long-running strike campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
Khamenei, 86, had led Iran since the 1989 death of its founding supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, who ruled the country for 10 years after toppling the country’s last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
Before his decades-long rule as Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei served as the country’s president from 1981 to 1989.
