Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader since 1989, was killed in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on his compound in Tehran on Saturday February 28, 2026.
Iranian state television confirmed his death hours after President Donald Trump announced it on social media.
Within hours of the reports spreading, residents in Tehran were cheering from balconies and windows, setting off fireworks, playing music and chanting “freedom, freedom”. Videos circulating on social media showed celebrations erupting not just in Tehran but in the nearby city of Karaj and the central city of Isfahan. The scenes inside Iran were mirrored in cities across the world, with large crowds of Iranians in the diaspora also taking to the streets.
In Los Angeles, home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran itself, crowds marched in celebration, with many calling for Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi to lead the country into a new era.
Legal adviser Gissou Nia, who represents survivors in five separate legal cases against Khamenei, described him as someone who “sat at the top of a command structure responsible for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Iran and the broader region.” She said survivors she spoke with on Saturday felt a deep sense of relief, though some lamented that they never got to see him answer for his crimes in a courtroom.
There was however a different reaction from Khamenei’s supporters. Iranian state media showed mourners gathering at the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, with people seen crying and collapsing in grief. Iran’s government declared 40 days of national mourning.
A three-person council comprising Iran’s president, the chief of the judiciary and one jurist from the Guardian Council has been established to temporarily assume all leadership duties until a new supreme leader is elected.
Trump, who described Khamenei as “one of the most evil people in history,” wrote that this was “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their country.”
