The day that Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in a pinpoint leadership decapitation strike marked the beginning of the war with Iran.
The strike on the leadership compound also took out several military leaders who were in the process of planning a defense against a U.S.-Israeli joint strike, having been tipped off by Oman’s foreign minister, Badr Albusaidi, who said the "mood" in Washington had turned toward war.
Despite the danger, military commanders responsible for the defense of Tehran and for the safety of the supreme leader and his family gathered in the leadership compound in downtown Tehran in the morning. Other key members of the Iranian government also took shelter in the same bunker, knowing that only a direct hit with a powerful MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) would take them out.
Israel ended up dropping 30 precision bunker-busting bombs on the site, killing several members of Khamenei’s immediate family, including one of his daughters, his son-in-law, a daughter-in-law (Zahra Haddad-Adel), and a grandchild. His son Mojtaba was badly injured and has yet to be seen in public since the Revolutionary Guards engineered his "election" as successor to his father.
Almost the entire Iranian military braintrust was taken out:
- Ali Shamkhani: secretary of Iran's Defense Council and senior security adviser to Khamenei.
- Major General Mohammad Pakpour: commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
- Major General Abdolrahim Mousavi: chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.
- Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh: minister of Defense and former Air Force commander.
- Brigadier General Mohammad Shirazi: head of the Military Office of the Supreme Leader.
Barely escaping with his life was Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, who was pulled out of the rubble along with Khamenei’s deputy chief of staff, Ali Asghar Hijazi, three days later.
Araghchi was reporting back to Khamenei’s deputy chief of staff, Ali Asghar Hijazi, when the building was shaken by three blasts within seconds – each closer than the last, he said. “The third explosion was almost next to our building. The section where Mr Hijazi’s office was located was directly hit, and the left side of the building was completely destroyed.”
Hijazi’s secretary was killed instantly, but Araghchi and Hijazi escaped the full force of the detonation.
“We were on the other side of the building, and after the explosion, the ceiling, walls, and everything collapsed on us. I grabbed Mr Hijazi’s hand, and we made our way through the beams and boards and pieces of wood, hearing the cries for help. Water was pouring from the ceiling. Everything was wrecked. We eventually got out, and I saw that various parts of the compound had been targeted.”
Then came the nightmare of waiting to be resuced.
Araghchi was rushed to the foreign ministry by a passerby since his official car had been hit.
“For three days we were cut off from everything trying to find out who was alive and who had been martyred,” he said. “The enemy thought they could paralyse us by targeting leadership, but they failed.”
Despite Araghchi's bravado, the strike was successful beyond measure. The Iranians still don't know whom to trust. Mojtaba Khamenei is cowering in a bunker somewhere; the leadership is reportedly extremely limited in how they communicate with each other, not trusting electronic devices given the severity of the penetration of their security by Israel; the security leak prompted a massive internal purge and intelligence audit to uncover local informants or technical breaches that enabled U.S.-Israeli intelligence to pinpoint the compound.
To prevent internal unrest or potential uprisings during the leadership vacuum, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) implemented strict curfews, digital blackouts, and heavy security checkpoints across major urban centers like Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan. The regime, already paranoid even before the war, is now scared of its own shadow. Araghchi's propaganda notwithstanding, Iran under the current regime may never recover its confidence.
Khamenei's last moments must have been horrifying. No matter how ready you are to die, at the moment the bomb collapsed his bunker, he certainly wasn't expecting death and almost certainly knew he had been killed by his enemies.
The families of the tens of thousands of Iranians killed, executed, and assassinated by his murderous regime might take comfort in the fact that his was a terrifying death.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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