Ayatollah Khamenei, reported killed

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been an inveterate foe of the West, crushing internal opposition while supporting proxy forces across the region in the hope of making his country respected and feared.



He was reported to have been killed on Saturday in the conflict that had defined him, as senior Israeli official told Reuters his body had been found following U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Iran.



Satellite images showed significant damage to his Tehran compound, one of the first targets of the bombing campaign.



Khamenei's death would represent a massive blow to the Islamic Republic that he had ⁠led since 1989, a decade after rising to prominence in the theocratic revolution that toppled Iran's monarchy and rocked the Middle East.