Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei broke cover with a speech to supporters in Tehran on Sunday, amid mounting threats to his regime and his life.
Khamenei struck a defiant note. “We are not the instigators,” he said. “But if anyone wants to attack or harass, the Iranian nation will deal a heavy blow to them.”
Khamenei’s public appearances have been rare since the eruption of mass protests in late December, followed by the brutal crackdown by his regime that killed thousands and the build up of US military assets in the region.
Opposition media, sources in Iran and US military analysts believe Khamenei has gone underground, making use of fortified bunkers and a network of tunnels below the capital for protection against a possible decapitation strike by the Trump administration.
A regime diplomat recently denied that Khamenei was in hiding and sought to explain his lack of public appearances by claiming that he is “holding all required meetings with officials via video conferencing and other means”.
But a political analyst in Tehran told The i Paper that there are increasing concerns within the regime that the US or Israel could try to assassinate him. Recent precedents fuel those concerns.
US special forces snatched Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their home in Caracas last month, following a military build up that mirrored movements around Iran.
Israel has also expanded decapitation strikes over the past two years, targeting the heads of Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis of Yemen.
Israel’s military assassinated Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran in 2024, and several top Iranian officials during the war last year, with one raid injuring Iran’s Prime Minister Masoud Pezeshkian, according to reports.
Smoke rises from the Israeli air strike targeting Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut in 2024 (Photo: Joseph Eid/AFP/Getty)Trump raised the idea of killing Khamenei last year, warning “he is an easy target.” Meanwhile, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said the Supreme Leader would have been killed during the 12-day war last year if an opportunity had presented itself.
The New York Times, citing multiple regime sources, reported that Khamenei had moved to a secure bunker last June, cut off electronic communications and spoke mostly through a single trusted aide.
Iran International, an opposition outlet based in London, reported claims from sources in Iran last month that Khamenei had now been moved into an underground shelter in the capital with “interconnected tunnels” due to the rising risk of attack, with his son Masoud Khamenei placed in charge of the leader’s office.
Such measures paint a similar picture to details reported during the war with Israel, when Khamenei retreated from view and issued only rare video messages.
Protests have flared up across Iran since December, with the regime brutally cracking down on them (Photo: Anonymous/Getty)Ken Katzman, an ex-CIA Iran analyst, said the Ayatollah was likely to be on the move between secure locations, including his home city of Masshad in northeastern Iran, where he has “a lot of protective apparatus”.
With US and Israeli intelligence assets concentrated in Tehran and other major cities, Khamenei could also exploit gaps in rural areas, Katzman added, which could offer him an escape route if needed.
“If the regime was to start to collapse, he could make his way to the countryside and ultimately to Russia or Belarus,” Katzman said. Israeli intelligence sources have assessed that Khamenei could join former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Moscow.
Michael Mulroy, an Iran specialist who served as a senior defence official during Trump’s first term, said that Khamenei could also make use of a network of tunnels beneath Tehran that were built during the war with Iraq in the 1980s and have been repeatedly extended since.
But the security operation will still have vulnerabilities, said Naysan Rafati, Crisis Group’s lead Iran analyst.
“The Iranians may have tweaked their operational security and lessened Khamenei’s public appearances but there’s no guarantee against a potential decapitation operation,” he said, noting the “extraordinary intelligence penetration” shown by the US and Israel.
Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and his wife in handcuffs exiting a helicopter in New York after their capture (Photo: XNY / Star Max / GC Images)Khamenei may also be wary of his own inner circle, Rafati said, noting the case of Venezuela where some members of the Maduro regime maintained their own dialogue with the US and gained power through his departure.
“Are there people in the system who think Khamenei has become a liability rather than an asset at the top of the system? It’s entirely possible,” he said.
The Tehran-based political analyst told The i Paper that Khamenei would need “eyes in the back of his head”.
The US can also count on an extensive network of Israeli spies inside Iran to identify high-value targets, former Israeli military intelligence chief Yaakov Amidror said, despite many of these assets being used in the war last year.
Katzman agreed, citing the Israeli bombing of a secret underground location in June 2025 that killed officials and wounded Prime Minister Pezeshkian. “They have pretty good eyeballs,” he said.
US munitions, such as the 14-ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) used in “Operation Midnight Hammer” against Iran’s nuclear sites last year, could destroy even fortified underground locations, he added.
Mulroy said an attempt “to eliminate the Supreme Leader would have to start with exquisite intelligence to know where he is, and where he would go in the event of a threat”.
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The US could potentially seek to deploy a special operations raid as in Venezuela, he added, but said that Iran presented a more challenging environment. “An MOP strike is more likely.”
But he said assassinating Khamenei would be “rolling the dice” with unpredictable implications such as a major Iranian retaliation against US troops and allies in the Middle East.
Rafati said a decapitation strike would “create a vacuum at the top of the Iranian system” that could be occupied by an even more hostile regime such as “hardline elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards”.
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