The United States and Israel launched a joint military assault on Iran on Saturday, February 28, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in an airstrike on his Tehran compound. The operation, codenamed Roaring Lion by Israel and Operation Epic Fury by the Pentagon, targeted key officials, military commanders, and facilities across 24 of Iran’s 31 provinces. Israel’s air force dropped more than 1,200 munitions in a single day.
Khamenei, who had ruled Iran for 36 years, was killed alongside an estimated five to ten other senior Iranian leaders who were meeting at the compound when the strike hit. President Trump declared: “Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead.” A senior US defence official confirmed the assessment, and Iranian state media later acknowledged the death.
The strikes began after sunrise in Iran, with massive explosions ringing across Tehran. The human cost has been devastating. As of Sunday afternoon, at least 201 people had been killed in Iran and 747 injured. The deadliest single incident was a strike on an elementary girls’ school in Minab, southeastern Iran, which killed at least 148 people and injured 95. More than 100 of the dead were children.
Iran retaliated swiftly, launching waves of missiles and drones at Israel and at 27 military bases across eight Middle Eastern countries hosting US troops. At least nine people were killed in an Iranian missile attack on the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh. Three American soldiers were killed and five seriously wounded. Strikes hit installations in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, with three killed in the UAE and one in Kuwait.
The Iranian government announced it had established a three-person temporary leadership council to govern the country under Islamic law while a panel of Shia clerics chooses a new supreme leader. Forty days of public mourning have been declared. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that “everything must be done” to prevent wider escalation, describing the events as a grave threat to international peace and security.
It is difficult to overstate the significance of what has happened. The killing of a sitting head of state by a foreign military power, the retaliatory strikes across eight sovereign nations, and the power vacuum now opening in Tehran: these are events that will reshape the Middle East for a generation. Whether they make anyone safer is a question that will take rather longer to answer.