The death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been confirmed following a coordinated US-Israeli strike on a fortified command centre in Tehran, ending nearly four decades of rule over the Islamic Republic. A senior Israeli official confirmed that Khamenei's body was recovered from a heavily fortified underground facility following the conclusion of the strike.
Tehran now faces an immediate question of succession, the most significant shift in Iranian internal affairs since the 1979 revolution. The absence of a clearly designated successor has raised fears of internal conflict within a state whose institutions were built around a single, supreme authority.
