This satellite image from Airbus shows black smoke rising from the compound of Iran’s supreme leader in the capital Tehran on Saturday. Damage seen in the image appears to show that several buildings in the compound were hit by strikes, after the US and Israel launched joint attacks.
It’s unclear if Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was in the compound at the time.
CNN confirmed the location of the strikes on the compound by comparing it to several other videos of strikes in this area of Tehran and triangulating them.
In addition to strikes photographed in Tehran, explosions have been reported in multiple other Iranian cities, including Isfahan and Qom.
Broader context: The Supreme Leader’s compound, known as the beyt-e rahbari, has for years stood as the seat of the ayatollah’s decades-long grip on power. More than a building, it is the nerve center of Iran’s theocratic regime.
It’s where Khamenei has issued his stern pronouncements on all matters domestic and international, often using the pulpit to rail against Iran’s Western enemies and the United States in particular.
For millions of Iranians, the compound was the physical embodiment of a regime that has steadily lost the support of many of those it claims to rule over. A population ground down not only by decades of international sanctions but also by years of economic mismanagement, systemic corruption, and the brutal suppression of dissent.
That it was struck today in the US and Israeli military attack will carry enormous symbolic weight. It’s a deliberate signal aimed at the very heart of the Islamic Republic’s power structure.
