This is a developing story. More to follow very soon.
EDIT 1
Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei was killed a few moments ago, a senior Israeli official told journalists off the record.
Footage of Khamenei’s body was allegedly presented to Prime Minister Netanyahu a few minutes ago. No official statement has been published.
EDIT 2
Videos in Farsi published on social media show some people cheering in Tehran from their apartments.
https://x.com/ManotoNews/status/2027835583146463736
These videos are not authentified. They could very well be true or AI.
EDIT 3
Headline of Maariv newspaper is now “Khamenei is killed”
“After decades of absolute rule, Israel confirms that the end of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, has come”
EDIT 4
Reuters says Khamenei has been killed according to an Israeli official.
Iran DENIES the information and says Ayatollah Khamenei is fully in command.
https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-crisis-live-explosions-tehran-israel-announces-strike-2026-02-28/
EDIT 6
Some Iranian opposition accounts are celebrating.
Association of French-Iranian women says “YES, Finally”
https://x.com/femmeazadi/status/2027836456119443519
Iranian Sana Ebrahimi published video of herself dancing
https://x.com/__Injaneb96/status/2027841112610676910
EDIT 7
Politician Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Canadian Opposition, claims Ayatollah Khamenei is killed
https://x.com/PierrePoilievre/status/2027845628391526774
EDIT 8
I̶D̶F̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶f̶i̶r̶m̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶K̶h̶a̶m̶e̶n̶e̶i̶
The IDF said several Iranian leaders are killed, including the Defense Minister and Ali Shamkhani, the closest advisor of the Ayatollah
EDIT 9
Iranian Researcher Khosrol Isfahani published videos of people honking in the streets on social media
https://x.com/KhosroIsfahani/status/2027839875500912833
EDIT 10
Donald Trump told NBC News that he feels reports about the death of Khamenei are correct.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-responds-reports-ayatollah-death-rcna261149
EDIT 11
Iran International, the largest Iranian political opposition network, says Ayatollah Khamenei have been killed according to their own sources.
https://x.com/IranIntl_En/status/2027846843061633455
https://www.iranintl.com/fa/liveblog/20260228-Iranwar
EDIT 12
A french far-left politician who was questioned by police about her support for Hamas-Hezbollah just published a burning american flag. She really mad.
EDIT 13
Farnaz Fassihi, an iranian-american journalist, says she spoke on the phone with her sources in Tehran
Many people are celebrating but she says the information is NOT confirmed.
🚨 New York Times claims Trump confirms
EDIT 14
Official statement from the White House.
IT’S OVER FOLKS !!!
Anyone celebrating this, you HAVE to understand that the US and Israel did NOT do this because it was what the Iranian people want, they did it because it was what THEY want. Whether this will actually be good or bad for the Iranian people makes absolutely no difference to the US and Israel. This was not the US and Israel heroically liberating the Iranian people, this was the US and Israel making a very important decision for the Iranian people, without their approval or consent. And the US and Israel did that because they feel they have the right to make that decision for the Iranian people.
I can’t believe there are people dumb enough that this needs to be pointed out, but yes, a thousand times yes. Upvote for visibility.
Both can be true and the act does not need to be selfless to be good.
Furthermore, even if you, perhaps understandably, aren’t a big fan of the concept of a Theocratic supreme leader, your personal feelings on that fact are really beside the point.
For better or worse, Iran has been the one of only countries on the world stage to materially support Palestinian resistance, and opposed Israeli expansionism.
You can’t support the Palestinian cause and cheer on this war/the death of the Ayatollah. Certainly not before there’s a free and unified Palestine, anyway.
I fully understand this, yet I am happy about Khamenei getting blown to bits. Now we just have to do the same thing to Trump and Bibi ^^
I know that Trump did do this for himself.
On the other hand, the Mullah dictatorship murdered Thousand of protesters during the last months, so they can get fcked!!!
I think this is obvious. We’re talking about a geopolitical war here. All the parties are looking exclusively looking to advance their own interests. That being said, I think we can criticize Israel and the US for attacking Iran for the way that they did, but also celebrate the deaths of this evil bastard as well as stand with the Iranian people who want their country back.
The same thing with people cheering on Maduro’s capture. People don’t care this is not a selfless act, they simply hope things finally start to get better.
they did it because it was what THEY want
- Oil. Iran is said to be producing the same amount as Iraq.
- Ensure that Yahoo would then expel all those are potential threats to his lebensraum plan. Yeah, Yahoo’s Israel is what North Korea is for Russia: the mouse that roars.
- Make the Christofascist supporters happy as if this offensive action is “the mandate of God”.
Now and infuriatingly Trump has achieved infamy as the worst generator of anxiety in history.
Who the fuck cares, Iranians finally got justice after decades of abuse and poverty
Look to Libya and Afghanistan, they did not get better
Libya should demonstrate that things can in fact get worse
The Iranians have not gotten justice. I don’t need convincing that he was a bad dude, but his death doesn’t cement freedom, and imo the attacks reduce stability and prosperity for Iranians.
I’m hoping the Iranian people can come out of this a better country. But you are totally correct in that the US did this for the oil not the people.
So long as the new governance is approved by Israel and The West. They better not try to democratically elect a leftist or socialist otherwise they’re gonna get a Western backed dictator forced on them instead.
Gas, mostly.
Khamenei was a monster. It doesn’t matter how or why he’s dead. Good riddance, may he burn in hell for an eternity.
It doesn’t matter whether a monster is killed by someone with noble intentions or a monster is killed by another monster. Either way there’s one less monster in the world.
I’m glad he’s dead, but the fear is that this creates an even worse situation.
Attempts to remove a dictator by force are usually not possible without a lengthy occupation. There’s no new government or leaders ready to form a new government that is better for the Iranian people. An occupation is also unlikely to have good results. This isn’t reforming Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, this is something else entirely. I would expect the people of Iran to not respond well to aggressors occupying their country. This is at best Afghanistan 2, but likely worse
For sure. It seems the thinking is the Iranian people might rise up and overthrow the regime. But that’s just throwing a dice and hoping for the best. A month ago that could have happened, but the regime has already machine gunned down so many people and executed so many more, that is that going to happen now? A lot of things would have to line up for that kind of thing to work and it’s impossible to make a movement among a population work like a military operation.
Something that seems to have gotten lost in this is the fact that Iran was enriching uranium. The Uranium Iran gets from Russia is already enriched by Russia to the level suitable to be used in their nuclear reactor. People seem to discount the Uranium enrichment as propaganda (because of the lies of W Bush) but this is science. They were enriching Uranium to 60%, if they continued you’d be in a situation where a country that calls the US “the Great Satan” and has officially said they want to “wipe Israel off the map” could have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.
All things considered, it would have been best to have continued the agreement Obama made with Iran. The reports from IAEA indicated they were abiding by that agreement. But Trump cancelled that in his first term, which made this war all but inevitable. There is truth to the statement that we can’t have a fundamentalist regime whose goal is to be an existential threat to other counties be in the possession of nuclear weapons. What Trump doesn’t say is he cancelled the agreement that was preventing that before. Iran was unlikely to sign onto a new agreement (at least not in good faith) after Trump cancelled the old one and assassinated their top general. Trump did all of the acts of war in his first term, and only now is having the actual war.
Given the mess Trump created in hist first term, he painted himself into a corner and this war was the most likely outcome. So now there’s nothing to do but wait and see what happens next. I hope for the best for the Iranian people even though it would be a big political win for Trump if it does work out.
Tbh, any nation that doesn’t have nuclear weapons should be rushing to make them. after what we saw in Ukraine and well Iran this week.
Ultimately your country can be taken over whenever by whoever unless you have nuclear weapons. That’s the way our world is now. Might = Right.
I hate it but it’s where we are now
Well yeah, the Iran nuclear program started when W. Bush did his axis of evil speech naming off a hit list of countries the US would be going after… Iraq, Iran, and North Korea.
But none of that negates the fact that Iran was developing nuclear weapons while stating many times their goal was to be an existential threat to another country.
Maybe if you’re making nukes don’t go on and on about how you’re going to destroy another country while doing so? If you do that, you shouldn’t be all that shocked when that country starts bombing you. The actions of the Iranian regime were really nuts when you think about it.
So wait let me get this straight. The US threatened Iran’s right to exist, Iran begins to develop nuclear weapons, and now they’re the bad guy for threatening the US’s right to exist. The very country that threatened them first
There are no good guys and bad guys. That’s a child’s understanding of the world.
Iran was building nukes while threatening countries that have the capability of bombing them. The Iranian regime made a major miscalculation there, it’s painfully obvious to anyone that can think strategically at all. They’re incompetent, which happens when you have hateful religious zealots running a country.
They also happen to be evil as demonstrated by the fact they executed people by the tens of thousands in the last month. I’m not sad the Ayatollah is dead. May he burn in hell.
It doesn’t matter whether a monster is killed by someone with noble intentions or a monster is killed by another monster.
It does matter. It matters. And it’s so, so important that people understand that it matters. This attitude of, “the ends justify the means,” is very dangerous. The Iranian nation has had their autonomy taken away from them, first by Khamenei and now by the US and Israel. They are powerless, subject to the whims of people more powerful than them. They don’t make their own decisions about their own nation, the decisions are made for them by people who have enough guns and strongmen to impose their will on them.
The Iranian nation has had their autonomy taken away from them, first by Khamenei and now by the US and Israel.
Are you saying they got their autonomy back in the last month after that asshole executed 30,000 people? Pretty sure they didn’t have autonomy for quite a few decades now. They have slim chance to take it back. The odds are the IRGC will hold onto control, but it’s ridiculous to imply they somehow lost autonomy twice. You either got it or you don’t and with the IRGC around they don’t have autonomy.
In you’re little analogy is the abusive dad always saying he wants to kill me and was handing out guns to people in the neighbourhood, telling them to take shots at me, which resulted in one of my kids getting killed? Then the abusive dad starts putting together a bazooka, all the while saying he’s going to kill me?
Your analogy kinda sucks. The abusive person is up to all kinds of shit in the neighbourhood and gets himself killed. If he was abusing his family and not going out into the neighbourhood and causing shit, he probably wouldn’t have gotten killed. But he’d still be a shitbag.
The wife and kids may or may not be upset by him getting killed, but I wouldn’t expect anyone in the neighbourhood to stick up for an abuser like you currently seem to be doing. Very bizarre to attempt of some analogy to be all “think of the children” over a guy that was such a terrible person.
We don’t need to mourn the monster killed by monsters, but we SHOULD remember that even in this short time many innocents have also been killed in the process.
We should also remember the many many many innocents killed by the monster that now lays dead.
I was hoping to see the Iranians throw him off a balcony but this is good enough.
The thing about precedent is that it sets a precedent.
deleted by creator
Good riddance.
If this is true it would make IRGC even more united and furious I hope they kill netanyahu in retaliation
And Fascist 47 while we’re at it.
Everything is still kind of unverified, but it sounds like they may have got a significant portion of the IRGC leadership too.
The popular voice right now seems to be the crown prince of the former Iranian monarchy.
Basically because there’s no obvious uniting figure, so they go with somebody irrelevant and inoffensive.
The US has opened a huge can of worms they have no interest in actually managing. This is going to be Syria but bigger and in an economically significant area.
that asshole can go fuck himself
The issue is this is all western propaganda. We can only judge by Iran’s response, and since they’re making a cohesive military counterattack by bombing US Bases, we can see the country hasn’t lost its leadership.
Trump attacking Iran is not going to go well. I believe Iran will win and the US will have wasted resources. Most importantly, the Iranians have closed the Strait of Hormuz.
We can only judge by Iran’s response, and since they’re making a cohesive military counterattack by bombing US Bases, we can see the country hasn’t lost its leadership.
Iran has not been able to do that. So far we have seen low number of missiles attacking individual bases. Anybody including Iran knows that you want to launch as many missiles as possible at the same time against a target, so air defense can not deal with all of them. They have done that in the past, but not this time.
The other part is that Iran seems to know that a good number of Arab countries have closed their air space to the US. This includes the UAE. So there being Shahed attacks against Dubai is really really stupid from a strategic point of view. The UAE could easily allow them to actually use the air space or they even have a territorial conflict over some islands. It is not like Iran could do much, if the UAE took them back right now.
How? They don’t have a powerful secret service
The guy who raped and killed children and possibly ate babies with his besties Jefferey Epstein and Ghisline Maxwell said that the Ayatollah was one of the most evil men in history? I’m skeptical
As of 2026-02-28 20:39 UTC, via AP News:
JUST IN: Israeli officials tell AP that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. Neither Iran nor the US have confirmed
It’s not an extraordinary claim, though. It was a decapitation strike, and the sudden timing suggests they thought they had a particularly golden opportunity.
Like what, was he watching the Spring Sing at his granddaughters’ primary school?
Hmm, they did hit a girl’s school, didn’t they? This says he was in a bunker, though.
Too bad, I’m sure Assad was looking forward to meeting his new roommate.
I know there were plans in the work, but I’m not sure Iran ever finalized plans for a successor.
This might be a contender for shortest war ever, it may be difficult to figure out who they’re even fighting now.
You dont think the Iranian government had succession plans for their 87 year old leader?
You’d think so, but nothing concrete anyone outside the government seems to know about. Secret succession plans are obviously kinda problematic. The ones that are written down seem like they might require people who might also be dead now.
Any succession plan for a dictator is a mess. That is why they are very rarely “concrete” in the sense of being formally announced.
But a significant percentage of those who would have had a claim have likely agreed already. Allegedly this was a big effort last year.
Whether the chosen successor is any better is… very questionable. But, like with any regime change, we are either looking at ramped up atrocities or a reprieve for the populace as the successor keeps their head down for a few years.
Per the CIA (I think? Someone in the West), some hardliner will step up, Iran is not defeated.
I love your username.
Khamenei has named three people last year as possible successors. There’s supposedly some sort of council that would make the final decision.
The USA wants them to go back to the Shah 2.0. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
in Brussels there was a small gathering of people with Iranian flags and Israeli flags and pictures of the shah.
Feels a bit astroturfed to me, can’t prove it though.
Exactly what the Iranians in Tehranto want. These people fled Iran with stolen billions and they want to restore the elites to Iran. They had a huge march last month chanting “King Pahlavi”, so they do not want a democracy, they want to replace one oppressive government with another.
Wtf has happened.
The internet has become much worse. Iran is the most important thing happening. But take reddit for example. There seems to be a moderation effort to eliminate multiple discussions and funnel everyone and everything into these single chats. Does that bother anyone else?
Back in the day there would be multiple discussions so many views and opinions. Multiple conversations created momentum and insight. Each iteration improved on the last with information and then there was a single thread that could link to multiple threads. It now seems like that’s all gone. Everything is sanitized. I scrolled through some homepages even here on lemmy and it’s like
lame joke,
cat posts,
dumb meme,
angry post about Hollywood,
ww3 breaking out mega thread,
cat video,
trumps a butt head,
video game
video game.
Is this our world now. The most important thing is moderated into a drawer so we can get back to the paying a cat tax and being silly guys. What the fuck is going on. I feel like I’m losing my god damn mind.
You aren’t alone, but yeah, take a break
I did. For a while it only got worse and seems like the leftist i was a part of have become just really pitiful sad lumps. Like they really focused on “cat playing piano” part of the internet but ignored the rest. The rest was too confrontational for them. The leftist i left were watching liveleak videos and laughing their asses off.
You need to take some time away from online activities and stop taking the internet seriously. The Internet is not serious.
Saying the internet, the one technology that has the potential to spread education, spread information, transform human discourse, the way we approach politics, and generally push human civilization forward, was driven to state where it should not be taken seriously is not as reassuring as you may believe it to be.
the one technology that has the potential to spread education, spread information, transform human discourse
JFC… This isn’t Apple in 1985, that idea failed.
that idea failed
Yes. That’s the depressing part.
We have hit an inflection point where what you said is the crazy out of touch opinion, not mine.
Could they kill Putin inside his bunker? Would be nice 👍
No love for this dude, but this won’t end here.
War will likely continue for now, and he has nominated his successor.
However, eventually a power struggle may start (it’s not guaranteed) and then, Iranian people may get their foot between the door and force it open.
Hopefully there’s a focused retaliation against trump and his family/holdings personally. Take him and his spawn out, do the world a favour.
How fantastic would it be if elites just assassinated each other.
Just throw them all into a thunder dome
Uh… they tried that already?
No, a global superpower has not tried to assassinate trump
Iran has tried to assassinate Trump.
What should some other country should try to avenge the Ayatollah on his behalf? Guy was a piece of shit, why would anyone do that?
That piece of shit had followers, this isnt over. Expect attacks within the US now, this is gonna get ugly. Im Canadian im just mad we’re gonna take fire by proxy, the ayatollah is indeed terrible, but we’re not into policing what the other side of the planet is up to. The Americans love to do that, and when their own country is a shit show it’s a joke they’re trying to take a more stance.
In the end this is all a distraction from Epstein anyways
There already has been a mass shooting in Texas done by someone with an “Iranian themed” shirt on.
And someone shot up an Iranian owned gym in Toronto, the owner of which was an activist against the Ayatollah. No one was there, no injuries. That guy isn’t cowering in fear of the Ayatollah, so why are you?
Nobody is cowering in fear dummy. In the end the biggest terrorist nation on earth is yours. And all your colonial ancestors. Im just one of the many coloured folk you tried to genocide. All this war and madness is on every single American, every American should be considered a terrorist and a criminal. And actually that guy in the gym did flee the ayatollah so…
But in the end im kinda happy. You Americans love to bring war and murder to other nations, it’s time war came to your lands
Not like we’ve been here before. Surly there won’t be blowback from this.
yeah this has never gone wrong ever
We just killed the dude that killed the dude we put in power after killing a fourth dude. Fucking circus of circles.
Won’t believe until corroborated by both sides.
