Inside CIA's Plan To Eliminate Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

The CIA zeroed in on the location of the target: Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 86, Iran's supreme leader. The US intelligence agency had been trailing Khamenei for months, identifying his locations and patterns.

A confirmation of Khamenei's conferral with his top advisers put the Israeli-US air and naval operation against Tehran into motion, reported Reuters citing sources. (Live Updates here)

Khamenei had originally been expected to hold the meeting on Saturday evening in Tehran, a US source told the news agency. 

But Israeli intelligence detected a meeting at a leadership compound in the heart of Tehran on Saturday morning and the strikes were moved forward, the news agency said. 

Crucially, the CIA learned that the supreme leader would be at the site.

The United States and Israel decided to adjust the timing of their attack to take advantage of the new intelligence, reported NYT.

The vital information provided a window of opportunity for the two countries to go in for the kill. And they did. 

Trump unleashed the attack shortly after midnight in Washington -- and daytime in Iran -- two days after inconclusive negotiations in Geneva facilitated by Oman.

The operation began around 6 am in Israel, as fighter jets, armed with long-range and highly accurate munitions, took off from their bases. 

Two hours and five minutes after the jets took off, at around 9:40 am in Tehran, the long-range missiles struck the compound, reported NYT. 

"This morning's strike was carried out simultaneously at several locations in Tehran, in one of which senior figures of Iran's political-security echelon had gathered," NYT reported quoting an Israeli defense official. 

The official said that despite Iranian preparations for war, Israel managed to achieve "tactical surprise" with its attack on the compound, it said.

Khamenei's high-security compound in Tehran was struck at the beginning of the operation, and satellite imagery confirmed that it had been destroyed, marking an inflexion point in the 46-year Shia-theocratic rule, as Tehran's retaliation set off conflagrations in a swath of the Middle East.

Iranian state television confirmed the news of Khamenei's death in the early hours of Sunday, broadcasting archive images with a black banner. The Iranian leader's death is a seismic political shift that raises the prospect of chaos and a power vacuum in an already turbulent region.

Soon after, Iran's Revolutionary Guards vowed to punish the "murderers" of supreme leader, who Trump described as "one of the most evil people in history". 

Iranian media also reported the deaths of his daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter.

Iran's judiciary confirmed that Ali Shamkhani, a top advisor to Khamenei, and the head of Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards, General Mohammad Pakpour, were both killed.

One prominent survivor, Ali Larijani, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, vowed defiance.

"The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will teach an unforgettable lesson to the international oppressors," he said.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has vowed to punish the "murderers" of Khamenei and promised that the response will be the "most ferocious offensive operation in history" against the US and Israel.

In a statement posted on its official Telegram page, the IRGC said, "The hand of revenge of the Iranian nation for a severe, decisive and regrettable punishment for the murderers of the Imam of the Ummah will not let go of them."

Last June, with planning underway to strike Iran's nuclear targets, president Trump asserted that the United States knew where Ayatollah Khamenei was hiding and could have killed him, NYT reported.

That intelligence, NYT reported, was based on the same network that the United States relied on Saturday.