New details from Iran’s top diplomat about the strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei provide some of the clearest evidence yet of the precision and strategy behind the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that launched Operation Epic Fury, counterterrorism experts said Sunday.
The account, revealed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a new television interview, also highlights what analysts describe as a defining feature of President Donald Trump’s national security doctrine: using a decapitation strike against a hostile regime while simultaneously creating an off-ramp to end the conflict.
"Well, the building we were sitting in was targeted, but the wing we were in remained intact while the other wing of the building was destroyed," Araghchi said in an interview that aired June 4 on the Lebanon-based, Hezbollah-backed United States can reach the center of a hostile regime with precision and then offer it a way out," Mohammed said.
The daylight strike on elder Khamenei’s compound was carried out by Israeli jets targeting the site with 30 precision munitions alongside Sparrow air-launched ballistic missiles.
Military officials confirmed that a precise strike sequence killed Khamenei, 86, alongside Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Mohammed Pakpour and multiple top security leaders.
He has since been involved in back-channel discussions with the U.S. while maintaining a confrontational public stance.
"In Arabic, Araghchi calls the new leader ‘the young Khamenei in place of the elderly Khamenei.’ That is the language of a monarchy, not a republic of clerics," Mohammed observed. "They are rewriting the theology on air to fit a son who lacks the religious rank, who was wounded in the same strike and who then vanished for weeks. A revolution that came to power by ending a monarchy is handing the throne from father to son."
"The real story is not that Iran is strong," Mohammed continued. "It was shown the precision of American power and the door was held open, and it chose to widen the war instead."