Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has died after an Israeli strike in Tehran.
Fox News reports that Israeli leaders confirmed Khamenei compound and offices were reduced to rubble early Saturday after a targeted strike in downtown Tehran.
“Khamenei was the contemporary Middle East’s longest-serving autocrat. He did not get to be that way by being a gambler.
“Khamenei was an ideologue, but one who ruthlessly pursued the preservation and protection of his ideology, often taking two steps forward and one step back,” Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of FDD’s Iran program, told Fox News.
The development comes after Israeli military and the US launched an attack on Iran on Saturday.
He was born April 19, 1939, in Mashhad, eastern Iran.
Khamenei was among the Islamist activists who played a central role in the 1979 revolution that overthrew the US-backed shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
