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Iranian state media maintained that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was alive and in command on Saturday, directly contradicting US President Donald Trump, who declared the Khamenei dead following American-Israeli airstrikes on Tehran.
Trump announced Khamenei's killing on Truth Social, calling it "justice" and describing him as "one of the most evil people in History." He said the supreme leader's heavily fortified compound had been destroyed in the bombing campaign and that several top Iranian defense officials were also killed. "There was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do," Trump wrote.
Tehran offered a starkly different account. Iran's Tasnim and Mehr news agencies reported that Khamenei remained "steadfast and firm in commanding the field," while Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told NBC News that "as far as I know," the supreme leader and other top Iranian officials were in good health. Reuters also reported Khamenei was dead, aligning with the US account.
The head of public relations at Khamenei's office pushed back against the claims, accusing the country's adversaries of waging a deliberate disinformation campaign. "The enemy is resorting to mental warfare; all should be aware," the official was quoted as saying by Iranian state media.
Al Jazeera's Tohid Asadi, reporting from Tehran, noted there had been no official confirmation of Khamenei's death from the Iranian capital, leaving the question unresolved amid the chaos of an active military campaign.
Trump framed the strikes as both retribution and opportunity, writing that the operation represented "the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country." He urged Iran's military and secret police to cooperate with "patriots" to unify the nation, and suggested that those who stopped fighting could receive immunity.
"We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us," Trump wrote, adding a warning: "Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!"
He made clear the campaign was far from over, declaring that "heavy and pinpoint bombing" would "continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of Peace Throughout the Middle East." In a separate interview with Axios, Trump said he had options: "I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days."
Senior administration officials said the strikes were a preemptive response to what they described as an unacceptable threat from Iran's missile arsenal and nuclear ambitions. One official said Iran's missile inventory posed "an intolerable risk to the United States," and that Washington had intelligence indicators suggesting Tehran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against American assets in the region.
The officials pointed to Iranian retaliatory strikes on US bases in Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain as evidence of the threat. "The president decided he was not going to sit back and allow American forces in the region to absorb attacks from conventional missiles," one official said, adding that analysis showed casualties and damage would have been "substantially higher" had the US waited to be struck first.
Officials also revealed that during final negotiations, the US had made what they described as an extraordinary offer of free nuclear fuel to Iran in perpetuity. "We said, we will give you free nuclear fuel forever," one official recounted. "And they basically said that didn't work for them. They needed to enrich uranium."
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