Shortly before the United States and Israel launched their coordinated assault on Iran, the CIA identified its most consequential target: Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The agency has been tracking Khamenei’s movements with growing precision for months, following his routines and security patterns. According to the New York Times, it reached a turning point after finding out that a high-level meeting of Iran’s political and military leadership, chaired by Khamenei himself, would take place on the morning of February 28 at a secure compound in central Tehran.
It forced the US and Israel to adjust the timing of an operation that had originally been planned as a nighttime strike. The new information offered a narrow window to take out Iran’s leadership in a single blow.
The compound housed the offices of the Iranian presidency, the supreme leader and the Supreme National Security Council. Mossad analysts reportedly determined that the gathering would include, apart from Khamenei, senior defence officials, such as Mohammad Pakpour, commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh and Ali Shamkhani, a senior military adviser.
Shortly after 6am in Israel, fighter jets took off carrying long-range, precision-guided munitions. By 9.40am Tehran time (8:10am in Jerusalem), they launched their missiles on multiple buildings within the compound. An Israeli defence official said the strikes were carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran, achieving what he described as “tactical surprise” despite Iranian preparations for war.
Iranian media reported explosions in the capital shortly after the attack. Smoke was seen rising above Jomhouri Square and Hassan Abad Square. Blasts were also reported in Karaj, Isfahan, Qom and Kermanshah. A spokesman for the Iranian Red Crescent said 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces had been hit in American and Israeli strikes.
Videos circulating online showed scenes of panic near impact sites. Verified footage captured explosions within a kilometre of the Leadership House, Khamenei’s compound. Satellite imagery later revealed blackened buildings and debris scattered across the complex.
By evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in a televised address that “we destroyed the compound of the tyrant Khamenei in the heart of Tehran”, adding that there were “many signs that the tyrant himself is no more”. US President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social that Khamenei was dead, claiming he had been unable to evade American intelligence and “highly sophisticated tracking systems”.
Confirmation came on Sunday from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, whose statement was read on state television. The official news agency IRNA subsequently reported the deaths of Rear Shamkhani and Pakpour, two of the senior figures Israel had said it targeted.
The speed and precision of the strike reflected an unusually deep level of intelligence co-operation between Washington and Israel, especially in the wake of last year’s 12-day war. During that conflict, US officials said, American agencies learned more about how Khamenei and the Revolutionary Guard communicated and moved under pressure. That knowledge was used to refine surveillance networks and predictive models tracking his movements.
Saturday’s strike relied on the same network that had allowed Trump to assert publicly last June that Washington knew where Khamenei was hiding. Since then, the quality of information has improved markedly. Although Iran’s top intelligence chief reportedly escaped, officials briefed on the operation said the upper ranks of the country’s intelligence services had been severely degraded.
The decision to mount such a sweeping assault marked a dramatic break from decades of American restraint. US intelligence assessments had concluded that Iran was unlikely to pose a direct threat to the US mainland within the next decade. Yet Trump authorised what amounted to a regime-destruction campaign against a country of more than 90 million people.
There were reports that the move followed weeks of lobbying by Israel and Saudi Arabia. According to the Washington Post, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made multiple private calls urging Trump to strike, even as Riyadh publicly supported a diplomatic track. Netanyahu, for his part, had long pressed for decisive action against what he views as an existential threat to Israel.
The Saudi position was complicated. Publicly, Riyadh insisted its airspace would not be used in an attack. Privately, MbS and his brother, Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, warned US officials that Iran would emerge stronger if not confronted while American forces were heavily deployed in the region.
At the same time, Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner were pursuing talks with Iranian officials in Geneva over Tehran’s nuclear and missile programmes. Their final meeting took place two days before the strike. According to a senior administration official, they were convinced that Iran intended to preserve enrichment capabilities that could, over time, support a nuclear weapon.
By Friday, Trump’s frustration was evident. He spoke cryptically of a “very big decision”. Within hours, he had returned to Florida and finalised a speech announcing the attack.
The outcome was the sudden removal of a leader who had dominated Iran’s political system for nearly four decades. Rather than a managed succession, the Islamic Republic now faces a turbulent and uncertain transition, unfolding under the shadow of foreign airstrikes and the most profound leadership vacuum since 1979.