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

This photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, shows Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a televised speech, under 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 figure cuts an increasingly isolated silhouette—Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old Supreme Leader of Iran, suddenly bereft of the generals, spymasters, and strategists who once made up the steel spine of his rule. In a span of mere hours, Iran’s most elite military and intelligence commanders were wiped out, marking the most devastating blow to the Islamic Republic’s leadership since its inception in 1979. The deaths weren’t just symbolic—they were surgical. The head of the Revolutionary Guards. The architect of Iran’s missile programme. The chief of military intelligence. The coordinator of national defence. Gone. One by one, the core of Khamenei’s advisory ring has been eliminated, shattering the command-and-control structure he built over three decades.

The Night the Guard Fell

The strikes began just past midnight last Friday. Precision-guided Israeli missiles struck high-value targets in and around Tehran—underground bunkers, communication nodes, airbases—and with them, the men who commanded them. Major General Hossein Salami, the Guards’ commander-in-chief, was among the first confirmed dead. A long-time Khamenei loyalist, Salami was more than a military 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 eliminated in a secondary strike, alongside key deputies while they convened to plan retaliation. Intelligence chief Mohammad Kazemi was gone next. Then came the death of General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s armed forces chief of staff, and General Gholam Ali Rashid, commander of joint military operations. By Saturday morning, the upper tier of Iran’s warfighting architecture had been decapitated. In military terms, it was a blitz of breathtaking efficacy. In political terms, it was an earthquake.

The Isolation of the Supreme Leader

Khamenei has always ruled through concentric circles of loyalty—clerics, Guardsmen, intelligence officials. Their loyalty was never in question; their effectiveness, tested through wars, uprisings, and assassinations, was what kept the Islamic Republic intact. Now, that circle lies broken. Sources familiar with the workings of Khamenei’s decision-making say the inner circle was never institutional—it was relational. These weren’t just officers, they were comrades. Men he had fought beside, plotted revolutions with, entrusted the future to. Their loss is not only strategic—it is deeply personal. What remains is a smaller, more fragile apparatus. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has grown in stature over the past two decades, and now emerges as the de facto coordinator of both policy and security. A cleric with no formal title but immense behind-the-scenes clout, Mojtaba is seen by insiders as both successor-in-waiting and chief-of-staff in practice. The old lieutenants who remain—diplomatic veterans like Ali Akbar Velayati and Kamal Kharazi, domestic fixers like Mohammad Golpayegani—now find themselves holding the last threads of a once expansive power structure.

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 partner)

And Khamenei’s losses extend beyond Iran’s borders. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, long Tehran’s regional ace and one of Khamenei’s few true foreign confidants, was killed in a strike last September. Syria’s Bashar al-Assad—propped up for years by Iranian guns and gold—was ousted by a rebel uprising in December. The famed “Axis of Resistance” now lies in fragments, with its anchors in Lebanon and Damascus broken, and its leader in Tehran shaken. With Hezbollah weakened and Syria uncertain, Iran’s deterrence posture is severely compromised. Its proxies are scattered, its supply lines disrupted, and its ability to escalate in multiple theatres constrained. For Israel, that’s a strategic triumph. For the region, it raises the spectre of an emboldened Iran acting unpredictably.

What Comes Next?

In Tehran, the government has tried to project continuity. Missile salvos have been fired at Israeli targets. Speeches invoking vengeance have filled state television. But behind closed doors, the regime is scrambling. The new commanders lack the battlefield experience of their predecessors. The intelligence apparatus is disoriented. The regular army, traditionally sidelined by the Guards, may be asked to step in—further complicating the military chain of command. And over it all looms the figure of Mojtaba, untested in war, yet now central to crisis management. For Khamenei, the moment is existential. He has always prioritised regime survival above all else—over ideology, over diplomacy, over economy. That calculus hasn’t changed. But with his most trusted men gone, the execution of that survival strategy is no longer guaranteed. As one Iranian insider put it, “He is cautious. But he is now also alone.” And in the chessboard of the Middle East, there is no lonelier square than Tehran when the generals are gone, the allies are dead, and the war drums are pounding.