One-by-One: How Iran’s Supreme Commander Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lost his top commanders and why his axis is crumbling | World News

This photograph launched by an official web site of the workplace of the Iranian supreme chief, reveals Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a televised speech, beneath a portrait of the late revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini. (AP/PTI)(AP06_14_2025_000001B)

In the smouldering wreckage of Israel’s aerial blitz over Tehran, one determine cuts an more and more remoted silhouette—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader of Iran, immediately bereft of the generals, spymasters, and strategists who as soon as made up the metal backbone of his rule. In a span of mere hours, Iran’s most elite army and intelligence commanders have been worn out, marking probably the most devastating blow to the Islamic Republic’s management since its inception in 1979. The deaths weren’t simply symbolic—they have been surgical. The head of the Revolutionary Guards. The architect of Iran’s missile programme. The chief of army intelligence. The coordinator of nationwide defence. Gone. One by one, the core of Khamenei’s advisory ring has been eradicated, shattering the command-and-control construction he constructed over three many years.

The Night the Guard Fell

The strikes started simply previous midnight final Friday. Precision-guided Israeli missiles struck high-value targets in and round Tehran—underground bunkers, communication nodes, airbases—and with them, the lads who commanded them. Major General Hossein Salami, the Guards’ commander-in-chief, was among the many first confirmed useless. A protracted-time Khamenei loyalist, Salami was greater than a army officer; he was the Supreme Leader’s enforcer, strategist, and ideological spearhead. Close behind him, Amir Ali Hajizadeh—the brains behind Iran’s drone and missile arsenal—was eradicated in a secondary strike, alongside key deputies whereas they convened to plan retaliation. Intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi was gone subsequent. Then got here the loss of life of General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s armed forces chief of employees, and General Gholam Ali Rashid, commander of joint army operations. By Saturday morning, the higher tier of Iran’s warfighting structure had been decapitated. In army phrases, it was a blitz of breathtaking efficacy. In political phrases, it was an earthquake.

The Isolation of the Supreme Leader

Khamenei has at all times dominated by concentric circles of loyalty—clerics, Guardsmen, intelligence officers. Their loyalty was by no means in query; their effectiveness, examined by wars, uprisings, and assassinations, was what saved the Islamic Republic intact. Now, that circle lies damaged. Sources conversant in the workings of Khamenei’s decision-making say the inside circle was by no means institutional—it was relational. These weren’t simply officers, they have been comrades. Men he had fought beside, plotted revolutions with, entrusted the longer term to. Their loss is not solely strategic—it is deeply private. What stays is a smaller, extra fragile equipment. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has grown in stature over the previous twenty years, and now emerges because the de facto coordinator of each coverage and safety. A cleric with no formal title however immense behind-the-scenes clout, Mojtaba is seen by insiders as each successor-in-waiting and chief-of-staff in apply. The outdated lieutenants who stay—diplomatic veterans like Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, home fixers like Mohammad Golpayegani—now discover themselves holding the final threads of a as soon as expansive energy construction.

The List of Allies

Qasem Soleimani

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh

Mohammad Hejazi

Ali Shamkhani

Hossein Salami

Amir Ali Hajizadeh

Mohammad Bagheri

Gholam Ali Rashid

Mohammad Kazemi

Gholamreza Mehrabi

Hassan Nasrallah (non-Iranian, key regional ally)

Bashar al-Assad (non-Iranian, strategic companion)

And Khamenei’s losses prolong past Iran’s borders. Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, lengthy Tehran’s regional ace and one among Khamenei’s few true international confidants, was killed in a strike final September. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad—propped up for years by Iranian weapons and gold—was ousted by a insurgent rebellion in December. The famed “Axis of Resistance” now lies in fragments, with its anchors in Lebanon and Damascus damaged, and its chief in Tehran shaken. With Hezbollah weakened and Syria unsure, Iran’s deterrence posture is severely compromised. Its proxies are scattered, its provide traces disrupted, and its skill to escalate in a number of theatres constrained. For Israel, that’s a strategic triumph. For the area, it raises the spectre of an emboldened Iran appearing unpredictably.

What Comes Next?

In Tehran, the federal government has tried to mission continuity. Missile salvos have been fired at Israeli targets. Speeches invoking vengeance have stuffed state tv. But behind closed doorways, the regime is scrambling. The new commanders lack the battlefield expertise of their predecessors. The intelligence equipment is disoriented. The common military, historically sidelined by the Guards, could also be requested to step in—additional complicating the army chain of command. And over all of it looms the determine of Mojtaba, untested in warfare, but now central to disaster administration. For Khamenei, the second is existential. He has at all times prioritised regime survival above all else—over ideology, over diplomacy, over economic system. That calculus hasn’t modified. But with his most trusted males gone, the execution of that survival technique is not assured. As one Iranian insider put it, “He is cautious. But he is now also alone.” And within the chessboard of the Middle East, there is no lonelier sq. than Tehran when the generals are gone, the allies are useless, and the warfare drums are pounding.