Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a press conference on Saturday, suggested that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may be dead after the combined Israeli-US strikes on his Tehran compound. Iranian officials have yet to confirm reports about the 86-year-old’s death.
“There are many signs that Khamenei is no longer alive,” Netanyahu told reporters. A satellite photo released by the New York Times showed damage to Khamenei’s reported residence.
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Inside Israel, US plot to kill Khamenei
This comes after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) revealed its plans to attack Iran and Khamenei. Israel’s Channel 12 network reported that at least 30 bombs were dropped on the Iranian Supremo’s compound.
“Thirty bombs were dropped on the complex. Ali Khamenei was underground, but probably not in his own bunker,” Channel 12’s Amit Segal, who is known to be close to Benjamin Netanyahu, said without giving a source.
Meanwhile, it was also revealed that the CIA had assessed days ago that even if Khamenei was killed in the operation, he could be replaced by hardline figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Reuters reported, citing two sources briefed on the intelligence.
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IRGC figures taking power was among the multiple different scenarios that emerged, another source told the publication. CIA is yet to comment on the matter.
Netanyahu also said Khamenei’s compound had been destroyed, and several Revolutionary Guard commanders and senior nuclear officials had been killed.
200 fighter jets, 500 targets
The IDF, meanwhile, stated that approximately 200 fighter jets completed the largest ever military flyover in the history of the Israeli Air Force.
“Since this morning, approximately 200 fighter jets, under the direction of IDF intelligence and the Israeli Air Force, completed an extensive attack against the missile array and the defense systems of the Iranian terror regime in western and central Iran,” the force said in a statement.
“This is the largest military flyover in the history of the Israeli Air Force (IAF), conducted following accurate planning and based on high-quality intelligence, while synchronizing hundreds of fighter jets at the same time. The IAF’s fighter jets dropped hundreds of munitions targeting approximately 500 objectives, including aerial defense systems and missile launchers, in a number of locations in Iran, simultaneously. The strikes on the defense systems allowed the expansion of the IAF’s aerial superiority over Iranian aerial territory, and severely degraded the offensive capabilities of the Iranian regime, the launch sites in western Iran.”
