Lasun Alagbe
US President Donald Trump has emphatically confirmed the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei’s tragic fall remained a near reality as of Saturday evening with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, first hinting at it but, by Sunday dawn, even Iran’s state television had confirmed the passage.
Based on the international nature of the battle that led to Khamenei’s end, his death thus invokes the violent exits of other controversial Middle East leaders like Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein, respectively former heads of state of Libya and Iraq.
Gaddafi was killed on October 20, 2011, following his capture by opposition forces in Sirte, Libya. After a NATO-led air strike on his convoy, he was found hiding in a drainage pipe, beaten, shot, and killed while in custody.
Reports suggest he died from bullet wounds, with conflicting accounts of whether it was a summary execution or crossfire, sources had record.
As multiple authorities also note, Hussein was, on his part, executed by hanging on December 30, 2006, at the “Camp Justice” army base in Kazimain, near Baghdad. He was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity, specifically the 1982 killing of 148 Iraqi Shi’ites in Dujail.
While Khamenei’s problem with America and Israel bordered on Iran’s stubborn drive for nuclear weapons, history recalls that the West remains the bane of extremist or ‘revolutionary’ leaders in the Middle East.
Meanwhile, a presenter on state television announced his death at 5:00 am (0130 GMT), as the channel broadcast archive images with a black banner as a sign of mourning.
Meanwhile in a post on his Truth Social media, Trump had said: Khamenei , one of the most evil people in History, is dead.
“This is not only Justice for the people of Iran, but for all Great Americans, and those people from many Countries throughout the World, that have been killed or mutilated by Khamenei and his gang of bloodthirsty THUGS.
“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.
“As I said last night, ‘Now they can have Immunity, later they only get Death!” Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves.
“That process should soon start in that, not only the death of Khamenei but the Country has been, in only one day, very much destroyed and, even, obliterated.
“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective of peace throughout the Middle East and, indeed, the world!”
