Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, has been killed along with senior figures in the country’s leadership in strikes on Saturday carried out by the US and Israel.
Early on Sunday, the Iranian state-run news agency IRNA confirmed 86-year-old Khamenei’s death. The supreme leader’s daughter, son-in-law, and grandson were also killed in the US and Israel’s coordinated attack on Iran.
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Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian said Khamenei’s killing is an “open declaration of war against Muslims”, particularly Shia practitioners.
“This tragic event is the greatest trial facing the Islamic world today,” Pezeshkian said in a written message offering condolences over the killing of the supreme leader, who has ruled Iran for over three decades.
The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) also confirmed the killing of several other senior figures.
Here are some of them:
Ali Shamkhani
Shamkhani was the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council and a close adviser to Supreme Leader Khamenei.
The 70-year-old also oversaw the negotiations between the United States and Iran over the Iranian nuclear programme, the latest round of which concluded on Friday.
“If the main issue of the negotiations is not making nuclear weapons by Iran, this is in compliance with a religious decree issued by Iran’s leader and the country’s defence doctrine, and an immediate agreement is within reach,” Shamkhani had said on Thursday.
Shamkhani had also been targeted in an Israeli strike in June 2025, during the 12-day war between Iran and Israel. There were reports that he had been killed in the attack, but he was later confirmed to have survived. He was pulled from the rubble of his home, and had sustained severe injuries back then.
He had recently been appointed the secretary of Iran’s Defence Council, which was created after the war and coordinated Iran’s defence and national security policies, while mobilising resources to address threats.
He had also led Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) for a decade until 2023, making him the second-longest-serving security chief since 1979 after former President Hassan Rouhani, who was SNSC secretary for nearly 16 years.
Abdolrahim Mousavi
Mousavi served as the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces. He had been appointed to this post by Khamenei just days after Israel’s strikes on Iran in June last year.
He previously served as the commander-in-chief of the Iranian army from 2017 to 2025.
Mousavi is believed to have been a prominent figure working to develop Iran’s ballistic missiles, drone systems and Western-criticised space launches.
In March 2023, the US, together with the European Union, United Kingdom, and Australia, sanctioned Mousavi for committing serious human rights abuses in Iran.
“Iranian army personnel under Mousavi’s command reportedly fired machine guns at protesters in November 2019,” a report by the US Department of State said. In November 2019, protests had erupted across Iran after an abrupt decision by authorities to hike petrol prices as part of efforts to blunt the effects of crippling US sanctions on the country’s economy.
Aziz Nasirzadeh
Nasirzadeh served as Iran’s minister of defence in Pezeshkian’s government, which came to power after the 2024 elections.
He was previously the deputy chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces and also served as the commander in the Iranian air force from 2018 to 2021.
Amid US and Israeli strikes, Nasirzadeh played a key role in ensuring Iranian military and nuclear infrastructure was safeguarded.
In June 2025, when the US and Israel had threatened to strike Iran, Nasirzadeh warned that Iran would target US military bases in the region if the US attacked it first.
“If a conflict is imposed on us … all US bases are within our reach, and we will boldly target them in host countries,” Nasirzadeh had told reporters at the time.
After the June 2025 attacks, there were also reports that he had been killed, but local journalists later confirmed that he was alive and in good health.
Nasirzadeh was also critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. According to Iranian media, in October 2024, during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and attacks across Southern Lebanon, he warned: “Resistance will defeat Israel as it did in 2006.” He was referring to Israel’s 34-day armed conflict with Lebanon’s Hezbollah in 2006, when Israel could not completely dismantle Hezbollah’s influence in the region.
Mohammad Pakpour
Pakpour served as the commander-in-chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from June 2025 until his death.
Khamenei appointed Pakpour, a veteran commander who started and made his career within the elite force, to the post last year. He had previously led the IRGC’s armoured units and then a combat division during the war with Iraq in the 1980s.
Pakpour led the IRGC ground forces for 16 years before he was appointed commander-in-chief. He was also a deputy for operations at the IRGC and used to lead two major headquarters of the force.
Who will replace these Iranian officials?
A three-person council – consisting of Iran’s President Pezeshkian, Supreme Court Chief Justice Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei and one of the jurists of the Guardian Council – will temporarily assume all leadership duties in the country, Iran’s state TV reported.
Alireza Arafi, a religious leader on the Guardian Council, has been appointed to Iran’s leadership council, the body tasked with fulfilling the supreme leader’s role until the Assembly of Experts elects a new leader.
Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Maziar Motamedi said the IRGC and security chief Ali Larijani are also expected to play pivotal roles.
He noted that while the commander-in-chief of the IRGC has been assassinated, IRGC-linked Telegram channels are citing deputy chief Ahmad Vahidi, who was appointed to the position by Khamenei two months ago, as a likely candidate.