Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Dies at 86

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Middle East|Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hard-Line Cleric Who Made Iran a Regional Power, Dies at 86

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/28/world/middleeast/ayatollah-ali-khamenei-dead.html

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in more than three decades as Iran’s supreme leader turned the Islamic Republic into a regional power, brutally crushing dissent at home, and maintaining unswerving hostility to the United States and Israel, died on Saturday during U.S. and Israeli military strikes on his country. He was 86.

President Trump announced the death, writing on his Truth Social social-media platform: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” Iranian state media later confirmed he had been killed.

Ayatollah Khamenei’s death came amid an extensive attack on Iran by the United States and Israel earlier in the day. Mr. Trump had been building U.S. military forces in the Middle East for weeks and threatening to hit Iran if it did not agree to his demands, which included ending its nuclear program and accepting restrictions on its ballistic missiles. After the attack began, Mr. Trump encouraged Iranians to take over their government.

As the second leader of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Khamenei cemented and expanded its hard-line Islamist and anti-Western policies, shaping the nation’s Islamic revolution far more than its founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who held power for just a decade, most of it during a devastating war with Iraq.

At home, Ayatollah Khamenei ruled with an iron fist, blocking attempts at moderate reforms, labeling public demands for change as Western-orchestrated “sedition” and squelching dissent with arrests and executions. He vastly expanded a loyal military force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, whose intelligence wing served as a powerful tool of repression.