On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declared that it had taken apart the underground bunker of the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah in Tehran.
“The regime established the underground compound as a base to promote military activities and its extremist ideologies against the State of Israel and the Western world,” the IDF stated. “It covered multiple streets in the center of Tehran and had numerous entrances and meeting rooms for senior members of the Iranian terrorist regime.”
Subsequently, Israel released an illustrated video that showed several entry points across Tehran, with tunnels leading to the underground bunker.
A senior Israeli official informed that the fortified compound was directly beneath the location where Khamenei and other regime leaders were on Saturday morning, and almost 50 of them were killed in less than 50 seconds during the launch of .
The official said that Khamenei spent millions of dollars and several years constructing the bunker, which he didn’t use on the morning of the strike. Sources familiar with the intelligence claim that Khamenei thought no one had the courage to attack him.
The senior Israeli official told that Khamenei’s confidence was partly due to an Israeli – American deception plan that involved messaging, signals, and public statements by President indicating that nothing immediate was going to happen. Top IDF commanders even went home on Friday night, a few hours before the strike, in an effort to deceive the Iranian leadership.
Khamenei was killed on the first day of Operation Epic Fury after ruling the Islamic Republic for over 30 years. During that period, he oversaw severe internal crackdowns, including the most recent one in January, which targeted Iranian protesters, as well as international confrontations.
‘ Trey Yingst and Digital’s Efrat Lachter and Ruth Marks Eglash contributed to this report.