As Israel and Iran traded multiple waves of missile attacks over the weekend, prompting heightened tensions in the region, multiple, unconfirmed reports have surfaced that Israel’s military may have killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei during the attacks.
While unconfirmed, there has been chatter that Khamenei was potentially eliminated during the strikes.
BREAKING: 🚨 Multiple UNCONFIRMED REPORTS are now indicating Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been ELIMINATED.
No OFFICIAL CONFIRMATION, but SIGNIFICANT CHATTER on multiple Middle Eastern channels.
— E X X ➠A L E R T S (@ExxAlerts) June 16, 2025
However, additional reports have confirmed the whereabouts of Khamenei, stating that he is still alive.
Iran International reported that Khamenei was evacuated to an underground bunker in northeastern Tehran hours after Israel began its strikes Friday.
The report stated that Khamenei is together with all of his family at the shelter in Lavizan, the sources say.
He sought shelter in the bunker when Iran launched its attacks on Israel in April 2024 and October, too.
It’s also been reported that Israel did not assassinate Khamenei on the first night of the operation to give him a final chance to completely stop his uranium enrichment program, according to a diplomatic source in the Middle East cited by the outlet.
The news of Khamenei’s whereabouts came just hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Fox News over the weekend indicating that intelligence revealed that Iran, under Khamenei’s direction, was behind multiple assassination attempts against President Donald Trump.
In his first interview since Israel launched its attacks on Iran, Netanyahu said that the country’s Islamic regime had targeted Trump as a threat to its nuclear program and actively worked to assassinate him.
“They want to kill him. He’s enemy number one. He’s a decisive leader. He never took the path that others took to try to bargain with them in a way that is weak, giving them basically a pathway to enrich uranium, which means a pathway to the bomb, padding it with billions and billions of dollars,” the prime minister told Fox News’ Bret Baier during a special Sunday edition of “Special Report.”
Listen:
Israeli Prime Minister @netanyahu on intel of Iranian attempts to assassinate President @realDonaldTrump— "he's enemy number one.." and on when he let President Trump know of the plans for launching the strikes #FoxNews #SpecialReport #Israel pic.twitter.com/l2xX10ZwfH
— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) June 15, 2025
Netanyahu revealed to Baier that he was also a target of the regime after a missile was fired into the bedroom window of his home.
He went on to call himself Trump’s “junior partner” in threatening Iran’s ability to weaponize nuclear arms.
Netanyahu said his country was facing an “imminent threat” of nuclear destruction and was left with no choice but to act aggressively in the “12th hour.”
“We were facing an imminent threat, a dual existential threat,” he said.
Late last week, it was reported that Israel was preparing to launch preemptive attacks against Iran.
Netanyahu told Baier exactly why he felt his country had to act:
“One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal to the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year…. Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton, coming in at mach 6, right into our cities, as you saw today… and then in 26 years, 20,000 [missiles]. No country can sustain that, and certainly not a country the size of Israel, so we had to act.”
The Associated Press (AP) reported at the time of publication that Iran fired a new wave of missile attacks on Israel early on Monday, triggering air raid sirens across the country as emergency services reported at least five killed and dozens more wounded in the fourth day of a conflict between the regional foes that showed no sign of slowing.
This is an on-going story. Check back for further updates.