Authors: Jonathan Landy, Phil Stewart, Gram Slattery and Parisa Hafezi
WASHINGTON/DUBAI, March 1 (Reuters) – Israel and the United States chose Saturday to launch attacks on Iran to coincide with a meeting between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and top aides, according to two U.S. sources and a U.S. official familiar with the matter.
Israel said Khamenei was killed along with senior military officers including former National Security Council secretary Ali Shamkhani and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohammad Pakpour.
Two Iranian sources told Reuters that Khamenei met with Shamkhani and Supreme National Security Council Secretary Ali Larijani at a secure location on Saturday shortly before the attack began.
A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Khamenei’s body had been found.
US President Donald Trump said in a post on his “Truth Social” platform that Iran’s supreme leader was killed after intelligence pinpointed his whereabouts.
“He was unable to circumvent our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems, and working closely with Israel, there was nothing he or the other leaders who were killed with him could do,” Trump said.
U.S. and Israeli military strikes on Iran have thrust the Middle East into a new, unpredictable conflict, with Iran launching retaliatory attacks against Israel and surrounding Gulf Arab states.
Two U.S. sources and a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the confirmation of Khamenei’s meeting with senior advisers sets Israel’s air and naval operations with the United States into motion.
The U.S. official said the attack would need to hit Khamenei first to maintain a surprise effect, signaling concerns that the Iranian leader would go into hiding if given the chance.
A U.S. source said Khamenei had been expected to hold a meeting in Tehran on Saturday night. But sources said the attack was brought forward after Israeli intelligence discovered a meeting on Saturday morning.
The location of the meeting is unclear.
But Khamenei’s heavily fortified compound in Tehran came under attack at the start of the operation, and satellite images reviewed by Reuters confirmed it had been destroyed.
The impact of Khamenei’s death remains to be seen.
But in pre-attack assessments, the CIA concluded he would likely be replaced by Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hard-liners, according to two sources with knowledge of the intelligence.
(Reporting by Jonathan Landy, Phil Stewart, Gram Slattery in Washington and Parisa Hafezi in Dubai. Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk in Washington, Erin Banci in New York and Mayaan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Don Durfee and Cynthia Osterman)
