Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led the Islamic Republic since 1989, is dead at 86

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who assembled theocratic power in Iran over the decades as its supreme leader and sought to turn it into a regional powerhouse, bringing it into confrontation with Israel and the United States over its nuclear program while crushing democracy protesters at home, has died. He was 86.

Iranian state media reported the death early Sunday, after a major attack launched by Israel and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump said hours earlier that Khamenei had been killed in the joint operation.

Khamenei dramatically remolded the Islamic Republic since he took the reins after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini was the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics tasked with spreading religious purity. It fell to Khamenei, a stodgier figure with weaker religious credentials and a leaden demeanor, to turn that revolutionary vision into a state establishment.

He ended up ruling far longer than Khomeini. He greatly expanded the Shiite clerical class and built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the most important body underpinning his rule. The Guard became a military and business behemoth, the country’s most elite force and head of its ballistic missile arsenal, with hands across Iran’s economic sectors.

But the strains became harder to contain. Political repression and the faltering economy fueled successively bigger waves of mass protests. Anger over the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, detained for not wearing her mandatory headscarf properly, escalated into demonstrations against social restrictions. In early January, hundreds of thousands marched in cities across the country, many chanting, “Death to Khamenei.”

Khamenei responded with the deadliest crackdown seen in nearly 50 years of clerical rule as security forces opened fire on crowds, killing thousands.

At the same time, the Mideast wars sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel set in motion the collapse of the regionwide “Axis of Resistance” built by Khamenei. Israel and Iran attacked each other directly for the first time in 2024. Israel struck Iran again in June 2025, as it and the United States targeted the country’s nuclear program and killed top military officers and nuclear scientists. Iran retaliated by sending missiles and drones at Israel.

Khamenei’s death raises questions about the future of the Islamic Republic.

The 88-seat Assembly of Experts, a group of mostly hard-line clerics, will choose Khamenei’s replacement. But no clear successor is in place.

As he launched the bombing Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump called on Iranians to “take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.” What happens next may depend greatly on bodies like the Revolutionary Guard, which has repeatedly shown its willingness to use overwhelming force to keep power even as many of Iran’s 90 million people grow disenchanted.

“Culturally, the government is bankrupt,” said Mehdi Khalaji, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in 2017. “The ideology of the Islamic Republic did not work at all.”

Khamenei’s daughter and son-in-law, a grandchild and a daughter-in-law also were killed in Saturday's attack, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency, citing unidentified sources.

Iran’s government declared 40 days of public mourning and a seven-day nationwide public holiday to commemorate Khamenei’s death.

Ali Khamenei was born into a religious family in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad, a hotbed of revolutionary fervor during the struggle against the Western-allied shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

Like many other Iranian leaders, he studied under Khomeini at the seminary in the holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, in the early 1960s, before Khomeini's exile to Iraq and France.

Khamenei joined the anti-shah movement, facing time in both prison and in hiding. When Khomeini returned to Iran in triumph in February 1979 and proclaimed the Islamic Republic, Khamenei was appointed to the secretive Revolutionary Council. In 1981, he was elected Iran's third president; that same year, a bombing by opponents left him with one hand paralyzed.

With his thick, heavy-framed glasses, Khamenei lacked the steely gaze and fiery aura of Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. He fell far short of Khomeini’s religious scholarship, holding the relatively low rank of “hojatolislam” in the Shiite clerical hierarchy.

After being named supreme leader after Khomeini's death, he bounded overnight to the level of grand ayatollah, at the top of the hierarchy, and for years had to deal with skepticism over his credentials.

Khamenei acknowledged the doubts with humility. “I am an individual with many faults and shortcomings and truly a minor seminarian,” he said in his first speech in his new post.

Despite his lack of charisma, Khamenei stabilized Iran after the 1980s war with Iraq and governed for over three decades — far longer than Khomeini.

Hard-liners considered him second only to God in his authority. Khamenei created an ever-growing bureaucracy of Shiite clerics and governmental agencies that blurred responsibilities and left him as the ultimate arbiter. As Iran questioned whether to keep the Revolutionary Guard after the war with Iraq, Khamenei came to its rescue and allowed the paramilitary force to gain a powerful grip on Iran’s economy. He also used a system of appointees to undercut the civilian government elected by its people.

Under Khamenei's reign, Iran shifted fully from conventional warfare to support for proxies, building the so-called Axis of Resistance to advance its interests in the region. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, established with Iran's help in the 1980s, drove Israel from southern Lebanon in 2000 and battled it to a stalemate in the monthlong 2006 war.

Through Hezbollah, Iran perfected a strategy of making local militant groups its allies to project power — often through violence. Iran followed that model when backing Yemen's Houthi rebels, who in 2014 seized the country's capital, Sanaa, and held on for over a decade in a stalemated war in the Arab world's poorest nation — despite facing a Saudi-led coalition and later, U.S.-led airstrikes over their attacks in the Red Sea corridor.

Elsewhere, suspected Iranian-backed militants bombed a Jewish center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 85 people. Iran also was allegedly linked to the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, which killed 19 members of the U.S. military. Iran denied responsibility for both attacks.

Iran emerged as a prime beneficiary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which replaced its main regional threat, Saddam Hussein, with a friendly Shiite-led government. Iranian-backed militias waged a brutal insurgency against U.S. forces and embedded themselves within the country's political landscape.

Khamenei used the Guard's expeditionary Quds Force most successfully after the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State group seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria in 2014. Guard troops advised Shiite militias, the best fighters in Iraq, and gave crucial support to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria’s civil war.

That secured Assad for a decade, until the chaos sparked by Hamas' attack on Israel in 2023. Israel devastated the Gaza Strip and launched airstrikes and ground operations pulverizing Hamas, which Iran had armed and funded for years. Israel is widely believed to have killed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in an operation in Tehran in 2024, further embarrassing the Islamic Republic.

Hezbollah found its ranks targeted by exploding pagers and an Israeli campaign killed its longtime leader Hassan Nasrallah. Then, in December 2024, rebel fighters toppled Assad in an offensive in Syria, ending a half-century of his family's autocratic rule.

The supreme leader remained deeply suspicious of the U.S., referring to it as the “Great Satan” even after President Barack Obama came into office in 2009, offering dialogue and a fresh start.

He shrugged off U.N. sanctions and pushed ahead with Iran’s nuclear program, which the U.S. and its allies say hid a secret project to build a nuclear weapon up until 2003. Khamenei issued a verbal fatwa, or religious ruling, that nuclear weapons are un-Islamic, but vowed the country would never give up its right to develop what he called a peaceful nuclear energy program.

Under Iran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Tehran agreed to drastically reduce its stockpile and enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. But only three years later, Trump in his first term unilaterally withdrew Washington from the accord, arguing it didn't go far enough.

Iran has since broken all the limits of the nuclear deal and accumulated a stockpile of uranium enriched to nearly weapons-grade levels, now large enough to pursue several nuclear weapons if it chose to do so. Diplomatic efforts to restore the deal under President Joe Biden stalled.

In a March 2011 speech, Khamenei used toppled Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who had given up his own nuclear program years earlier, as an example of why Iran’s nuclear program remained so important in the wake of the Arab Spring upheavals in the Middle East.

“Just the way you give a lollipop to a child, Westerners gave ‘incentives’ to them and they gave up everything,” Khamenei said.

Khamenei's first major challenge came in 1997, when pro-reform politicians gained control of parliament and cleric Mohammad Khatami was elected president by a landslide, riding a large youth vote. The reformists demanded a loosening of the strict social rules imposed by the revolution and called for improved ties with the outside world, including the U.S.

Khamenei-backed hard-liners moved to contain the liberal movement, fearing it would eventually call for an end to clerical rule. Khamenei stopped parliament from loosening restrictions on the media in an unusually overt intervention. Clerical bodies blocked other key liberal legislation and banned many reformist lawmakers from running for reelection, ensuring a return of hard-liner control in the 2004 elections.

That set the stage for the election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 and his disputed reelection in 2009 amid charges of vote-rigging. Mass protests broke out, posing the greatest threat in decades to Iran’s clerical leadership. The Revolutionary Guard, Basij militia and police unleashed a crackdown in which dozens were killed and hundreds arrested.

The turmoil, and reports of protesters being tortured to death or raped in prison, dealt a severe blow to Khamenei’s prestige.

As sanctions bit further, popular unrest rose. Economic protests broke out in 2017 and demonstrations escalated in 2019 over a rise in government-set gasoline prices. A bloody crackdown that followed killed over 300 people, according to activists.

Although Khamenei struggled to preserve the ideological purity of the Islamic Revolution, Iran’s government has largely failed to rid the country of Western influence. Satellite dishes, banned in theory, crowd Tehran’s rooftops. Banned social media sites are widely used, even by some prominent politicians, despite being blocked.

Protests erupted again in 2022 over the death of Amini, a young woman detained for not wearing her hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. More than 500 people were killed and tens of thousands arrested when security forces crushed the demonstrations again.

In late December 2025, new economic protests erupted and would grow into what appeared to be the biggest protest movement ever. Hundreds of thousands across the country took to the streets, overtly demanding an end to the Islamic Republic. Some even chanted for the return of the shah's son, living in exile since 1979. The ferocity of the crackdown stunned Iranians.

With U.S. President Donald Trump, Khamenei faced a more aggressive and unpredictable American drive to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers in 2018, bringing a return of sanctions.

The two sides came close to war with the United States after an American drone strike killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020. At Soleimani’s mass funeral that drew millions to the streets, Khamenei wept over the casket of the man he once called a “living martyr.” Two days later, the Guard mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian airliner after its takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people aboard.

Iran ramped uranium enrichment back up, reaching 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Still, when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Khamenei resumed talks, underscoring the deep toll the sanctions had taken. Iran’s long-ailing economy entered a freefall, worsening domestic unrest.

But a deal remained elusive. In June, Israel and the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, inflicting heavy damage. How far back it set the program remained unclear.

During the crackdown on nationwide protests in January, Trump renewed threats to strike, demanding Iran make major concessions at the negotiating table. Then came three rounds of indirect talks. Then came Saturday.

Former Associated Press writer Brian Murphy contributed.

FILE - In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei listens to a speaker during a meeting with a group of university students in Tehran, Iran, May 28, 2018. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

FILE — Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei waves as he attends the 18th anniversary of the death of Iran's late leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic revolution in Tehran, June 4, 2007. (AP Photo/Hasan Sarbakhshian, File)

FILE- In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei listens to the then commander of the Revolutionary Guard Mohammad Ali Jafari during a graduation ceremony of a group of the guard's officers in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2015. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

FILE — In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a meeting commemorating Prophet Muhammad's birthday anniversary in Tehran, Iran, Sept. 21, 2024. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

FILE - Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, leaves an event titled "International Conference in Support of Palestinian Intifada," in Tehran, Iran, Feb. 21, 2017. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi, File)

FILE - In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks under a portrait of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, in a ceremony meeting a group of officials, in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a top security adviser to the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were killed in American-Israel airstrikes on the country, state media reported Sunday.

The state-run IRNA news agency announced the death of Maj. Gen. Mohammad Pakpour, who took over as the Guard’s top commander after Israel killed its past commander in the 12-day war last June.

Also killed was Ali Shamkhani, who has long been a figurehead within Iran’s security establishment, IRNA said.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in a major attack by Israel and the United States, Iranian state media confirmed early Sunday, throwing the future of the Islamic Republic into doubt and raising the risk of regional instability.

President Donald Trump announced the death hours earlier, saying it gave Iranians their “greatest chance” to “take back” their country.

State media reported that the 86-year-old was killed in an airstrike targeting his compound in downtown Tehran. Satellite photos from Airbus showed that the site was heavily bombed.

His death at his office “showed that he consistently stood among the people and at the forefront of his responsibilities, confronting what officials call global arrogance,” state TV said.

“Khamenei, one of the most evil people in History, is dead,” Trump wrote in a social media post. He warned of “heavy and pinpoint bombing” that he said would continue throughout the week and even beyond, part of a lethal assault the U.S. has justified as necessary to disable the country's nuclear capabilities.

Iran, which responded to the strikes with its own counterassault, warned of retribution, with the Cabinet saying that this “great crime will never go unanswered.” The paramilitary Revolutionary Guard threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever targeting Israeli and American bases.

The attack opened a stunning new chapter in U.S. intervention in Iran, carried the potential for retaliatory violence and a wider war, and represented a startling flex of military might for an American president who swept into office on an “America First” platform and vowed to keep out of “forever wars.”

The killing of Khamenei in the second Trump administration assault on Iran in eight months appeared certain to create a leadership vacuum given the absence of a known successor and because the 86-year-old supreme leader had final say on all major policies during his decades in power. He led Iran’s clerical establishment and the Revolutionary Guard, the two main centers of power in the governing theocracy.

As reports trickled out about the death, eyewitnesses in Tehran told The Associated Press that some residents were rejoicing, cheering from rooftops, blowing whistles and letting out ululations.

Mourners raised a black mourning flag over the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city and a major pilgrimage site for Shiite Muslims. The Iranian government declared 40 days of public mourning and a seven-day nationwide public holiday to commemorate Khamenei’s death.

Citing unidentified sources, the semiofficial Fars news agency, believed to be close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported that several relatives of Khamenei were also killed, including a daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and grandchild.

The joint U.S.-Israel operation, which officials say was planned for months, took place Saturday during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan and at the start of the Iranian workweek. It followed stilted negotiations and warnings from Trump, who last year trumpeted his administration's success in incapacitating the country's nuclear program but nonetheless cast the latest round as necessary to head off its potential resurgence.

About 12 hours after the attacks began, the U.S. military reported no U.S. casualties and minimal damage at U.S. bases despite “hundreds of Iranian missile and drone attacks.” It said targets in Iran included Revolutionary Guard command facilities, air defense systems, missile and drone launch sites, and military airfields.

Israel, for its part, said it had killed the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and the country’s defense minister, as well as the secretary of the Iranian Security Council, a close adviser to Khamenei.

Khamenei “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do,” Trump said. “This is the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.”

An Iranian diplomat told the United Nations Security Council that hundreds of civilians were killed and wounded in the strikes. Iran retaliated by firing missiles and drones toward Israel and at U.S. military bases in the region, and exchanges of fire continued into the night.

Some of the first strikes on Iran appeared to hit near the offices of Khamenei, the second leader of the Islamic Republic who succeeded Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israeli officials confirmed the death, followed by Trump.

Democrats decried that Trump had taken action without congressional authorization. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said the administration had briefed several Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress in advance.

Tensions have soared in recent weeks as the Trump administration built up the largest force of American warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades. The president insisted he wanted a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear program while the country struggled with growing dissent following nationwide protests.

Though Trump had pronounced the Iranian nuclear program obliterated in strikes last year, the country was rebuilding infrastructure that it had lost, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity to discuss Trump’s decision-making process. The official said intelligence showed that Iran had developed the capability to produce its own high-quality centrifuges, an important step in developing the highly enriched uranium needed for weapons.

Iran responded to the latest strikes by launching missiles and drones toward Israel and targeting U.S. military installations in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar. The Israeli military said Iran fired dozens of missiles at Israel, with many intercepted. The Magen David Adom rescue service said Saturday night that a woman in the Tel Aviv area died after being wounded in an Iranian missile attack.

At least three explosions were heard Saturday evening near the Intelligence Ministry building in northern Tehran, witnesses said, adding that air defense systems had begun operating there. Israel’s military said it had begun new strikes against missile launchers and aerial defense systems in central Iran.

In southern Iran, at least 115 people were reported killed when a girls’ school was struck, and dozens more were wounded, the local governor told Iranian state TV. U.S. Central Command spokesperson Capt. Tim Hawkins said he was “aware of reports” that a girls’ school was struck and that officials were looking into them.

Iran’s state news agency IRNA said at least 15 people were killed in the southwest, quoting the governor of the Lamerd region, Ali Alizadeh, as saying a sports hall, two residential areas and a hall near a school were hit.

Flights across the Middle East were disrupted, and air defense fire thudded over Dubai, the United Arab Emirates’ commercial capital. Shrapnel from an Iranian missile attack on the UAE capital killed one person, state media said.

Israel said the operation had been planned for months with the United States. Air Force pilots struck “hundreds of targets across Iran,” Israeli military chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir said in a statement.

Targets in the Israeli campaign included Iran’s military, symbols of government and intelligence targets, according to an official briefed on the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic information on the attack.

Trump acknowledged Saturday that there could be American casualties, saying “that often happens in war.” He said he was aiming to “annihilate” the Iranian navy and destroy regional proxies supported by Tehran. He called on the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard to lay down arms, saying members would be given immunity or face “certain death” if they did not.

Iran had said it hoped to avert a war, but it maintained its right to enrich uranium.

Iran has said it has not enriched since June, but it has blocked international inspectors from visiting the sites the U.S. bombed. Satellite photos analyzed by AP have shown new activity at two of those sites, suggesting Iran is trying to assess and potentially recover material.

Trump had threatened military action but held off following Iran’s recent crackdown on protests spurred by economic grievances that evolved into a nationwide push against the ruling clerics.

The Human Rights Activists News Agency says it confirmed more than 7,000 deaths in the crackdown and is investigating thousands more. The government has acknowledged more than 3,000 killed.

The strikes could rattle global markets, particularly if Iran makes the Strait of Hormuz unsafe for commercial traffic. A third of worldwide oil exports transported by sea passed through the strait in 2025.

Saudi Arabia said Iran targeted its capital and eastern region in an attack that was repelled. Bahrain said a missile attack targeted the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet headquarters in the island kingdom, and three buildings were damaged in the capital, Manama, and Muharraq city by drone strikes and debris from an intercepted missile.

Kuwait’s civil aviation authority said a drone targeted the main international airport, injuring several employees. Kuwait’s state-run news agency said three troops were injured by shrapnel from strikes that hit Ali Al-Salem air base. Explosions could also be heard in Qatar. Jordan said it “dealt with” 49 drones and ballistic missiles.

Lidman reported from in Tel Aviv. Boak reported from West Palm Beach, Florida. Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press reporters Joe Federman in Jerusalem, Aamer Madhani and Konstantin Toropin in Washington, Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Farnoush Amiri in New York and AP journalists around the world contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to show that the IRNA news agency reported 40 people were killed in the school strike, without specifying students.

FILE - In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks under a portrait of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, in a ceremony meeting a group of officials, in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of what Iranian officials said was an Israeli-U.S. strike on a girls' elementary school in Minab, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (Abbas Zakeri/Mehr News Agency via AP)

FILE - In this photo released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks under a portrait of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, in a ceremony meeting a group of officials, in Tehran, Iran, March 8, 2025. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei listens to a speaker during a meeting with a group of university students in Tehran, Iran, May 28, 2018. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP, File)

A group of men wave Iranian flags as they attend a demonstration in support of the government and against U.S. and Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People take shelter in an underground metro station as air raid sirens warn of incoming strikes by Iran, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Firemen and rescue workers inspect the site of an explosion at the Fairmont The Palm Hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

Rubble remains in the aftermath of an Israeli-U.S. strike in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Amir Kholousi, ISNA)

Smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

A woman holds a picture of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a demonstration in support of the government and against U.S. and Israeli strikes in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

People rush to take shelter as warning sirens sound following missile fired towards Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Civilians staying in a shelter after alarms announced that Israel had launched an attack on Iran, in Ramat Gan, Israel, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

People watch as smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo)

Smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo)

Smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo)

Smoke rises on the skyline after an explosion in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.(AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

FILE -Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz makes statements with his Greek counterpart Nikos Dendias after their meeting in Athens, Greece, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis, File)