Uncategorized
U.S. military leaders lay out timeline of attacks that killed Khamenei, Iranian officials
The U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran this weekend were described on Monday as a “massive, overwhelming attack” that came just hours after approval from U.S. President Donald Trump, the commander-in-chief of the military.
Air Force Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a Monday morning news conference from Washington that more than 100 aircraft were launched from land and sea beginning at 9:45 in the morning Tehran time (1:15 ET) in “a single, synchronized wave.”
“There was a massive overwhelming attack across all domains of warfare, striking more than a thousand targets in the first 24 hours,” said Caine.
Caine said the president gave the go-ahead order at 3:38 p.m. ET on Friday. At that time, he was aboard Air Force One heading to Texas with Republican senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and actor Dennis Quaid.
The order was then relayed through Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. Central Command, which includes the Middle East in its areas of responsibility. Central Command on Monday posted on X unclassified satellite imagery of unspecified strikes, in which individuals, equipment and buildings are captured within military sights, followed by explosions.
The military operation came after authorities from Israel and the U.S. spent weeks tracking the movements of senior Iranian leaders, an Israeli military official and another person familiar with the operation told the Associated Press before the Pentagon news conference. The persons spoke on the condition of anonymity, as they were not authorized to comment publicly.
Before the attacks, the CIA had for months tracked the movements of senior Iranian leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Caine said the co-ordinated operations with the Israeli armed forces were of “an unprecedented scale.”
Cyber operations preceded air and land attacks
The strikes at multiple sites killed several military and political officials, including Iran’s Defence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh and Revolutionary Guards Cmmdr. Mohammed Pakpour. It is clear civilians were also killed, with the Iranian Red Crescent Society saying Monday that the U.S.-Israeli operation has killed at least 555 people.
Khamenei, 86, was killed on Saturday, Iranian state media announced, in airstrikes by Israel and the U.S. that pulverized his central Tehran compound. Iranian state media said his daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law were also killed, according to a Reuters report.
Inside Iran, some grieved for Khamenei while others celebrated his death, exposing a deep fault line in the country. Khamenei built Iran into a powerful anti-U.S. force, with militant proxies across the Middle East during his iron-fisted 36-year rule.
“It was quite a surprise that he chose to be in his office in his compound — not in a hideout, not in a bunker — particularly at a moment where an American attack, an American-Israeli attack looked imminent,” Vali Nasr, professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, told CBC News.
Front Burner29:47War on Iran
Hegseth and Caine did not go into specific detail on the attack that killed Khamenei. When asked by a reporter for his reaction to the Shia cleric’s death, Hegseth said, “I think that Israel did a great job in the conduct of that operation.”
Caine said that, as with the operation that dropped massive bunker-buster bombs on Iranian nuclear facilities last year, what’s being called Operation Epic Fury also involved B-2 stealth bombers that made a 37-hour round-trip from the continental U.S.
Those attacks last year were conducted between 2:10 a.m. and 2:35 a.m. local time, but on this occasion it was a daytime operation that Caine said provided “speed, surprise and violence of action.”
In addition to the traditional four branches of the military, Caine several times referenced the use of cyber technologies in the strikes, as well as the U.S. Space Force. Those service branches “effectively disrupted communications and sensor networks,” he said, “degrading and blinding Iran’s ability to see, communicate and respond.”
Hegseth on Monday didn’t give specifics when asked about the ultimate goals of the operation, how long it might last or what success would look like, saying doing so would disadvantage U.S. forces.
U.S. claims air superiority over Iran
Trump did not fully articulate a rationale to the American public for unleashing airstrikes on Iran, or seek authorization from U.S. Congress ahead of the strikes.
The U.S. president said in a video released after the first attacks that he wanted to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.” A U.S. Defence Intelligence Agency assessment last May estimated that Iran was about a decade away from an intercontinental ballistic military capability, “should Tehran decide to pursue that capability.”
The killing of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has some, including U.S. President Donald Trump, hoping it will force a regime change in Iran. For The National, CBC’s Eli Glasner breaks down whether the attacks can change the government and what needs to happen for there to be a real shift.
Also last year, the defence intelligence agency stated that “Iran almost certainly is not producing nuclear weapons, but … has undertaken activities in recent years that better position it to produce them, if it chooses to do so.”
Trump said the weekend attack was intended to ensure Iran could not have a nuclear weapon, to contain its missile program and to eliminate threats to the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
Trump administration officials told U.S. congressional staff in private briefings on Sunday that intelligence did not suggest Iran was preparing to launch a preemptive strike against the U.S., three people familiar with the briefings told the Associated Press.
The two leading officials at the Pentagon on Monday said months of planning went into the assault, detailing the massive military buildup in the region, headed by two aircraft carrier strike groups, the USS Lincoln and the USS Ford.
The Ford had been deployed for NATO-focused operations in the Atlantic and North Sea for much of 2025, was redirected to the Caribbean in November to support U.S. efforts that led to the capture of Venezuelan autocrat Nicolas Maduro, and then was redeployed to the Middle East.
Caine said that thanks to U.S. and Israeli pilots and logisticians, air superiority has now been established over Iran.
But the question of what comes next remains. The U.S. has urged the Iranian people to rise up at this opportunity, which comes on the heels of weeks of widespread domestic protest beginning in late December that were eventually brutally crushed by the Iranian regime.
Asked by a reporter on Monday if there are currently boots on the ground in Iran, Hegseth said, “No, but we’re not going to go into the exercise of what we will or will not do.”
Reuters reported earlier that CIA assessments presented to the White House in the weeks before the Iran attack concluded that if Khamenei was killed, he could be replaced by hard-line figures from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or equally hard-line clerics, two sources said.