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

Time of India

8 hours ago

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.
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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
Role:
Commander, IRGC Quds Force
Date of Death:
January 3, 2020
Context:
Killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad
Impact:
Architect of Iran's regional proxy wars; his death dismantled the cohesion of Iran's overseas operations.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
Role:
Chief of Iran's nuclear weapons programme
Date of Death:
November 27, 2020
Context:
Assassinated in Absard near Tehran, likely by Israeli intelligence
Impact:
Scientific cornerstone of Iran's nuclear ambitions; huge intelligence failure and psychological blow.
Mohammad Hejazi
Role:
Deputy Commander, IRGC Quds Force
Date of Death:
April 18, 2021
Context:
Died suddenly under unclear circumstances amid tensions with Israel
Impact:
Had been in charge of Hezbollah missile operations; his death weakened Iran's precision-strike strategy.
Ali Shamkhani
Role:
Former National Security Council Chief; Senior Adviser to Khamenei
Date of Death:
June 14, 2025
Context:
Succumbed to injuries after Israeli airstrikes in Tehran
Impact:
Longtime military and diplomatic strategist; key bridge between clerical leadership and military.
Hossein Salami
Role:
Commander-in-Chief, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
Date of Death:
June 13, 2025
Context:
Killed in Israeli airstrikes on Tehran military sites
Impact:
Top military commander; central figure in both external conflict and domestic repression.
Amir Ali Hajizadeh
Role:
Commander, IRGC Aerospace Force
Date of Death:
June 14, 2025
Context:
Killed in a second wave of Israeli strikes while planning retaliatory action
Impact:
Architect of Iran's missile and drone arsenal; his death blunted Iran's retaliatory capabilities.
Mohammad Bagheri
Role:
Chief of Staff, Iranian Armed Forces
Date of Death:
June 13, 2025
Context:
Died in Israeli precision strikes
Impact:
Top military planner overseeing both IRGC and conventional army operations; loss shattered national defence integration.
Gholam Ali Rashid
Role:
Commander, Khatam al-Anbiya Central HQ (Joint Military Operations)
Date of Death:
June 13, 2025
Context:
Killed during first wave of Israeli attacks
Impact:
Oversaw strategic military planning; critical loss for wartime coordination.
Mohammad Kazemi
Role:
Head of IRGC Intelligence Organisation
Date of Death:
June 13, 2025
Context:
Died in Israeli strike targeting intelligence facilities
Impact:
Iran's top spymaster; responsible for internal security and counterintelligence.
Gholamreza Mehrabi
Role:
Deputy Head of Intelligence, Iranian General Staff
Date of Death:
June 13, 2025
Context:
Confirmed dead in coordinated Israeli targeting of Tehran military compounds
Impact:
Key military intelligence officer overseeing battlefield surveillance and analysis.
Hassan Nasrallah
(non-Iranian, key regional ally)
Role:
Secretary-General, Hezbollah
Date of Death:
September 2024
Context:
Killed in Israeli airstrike in Beirut
Impact:
Strategic proxy and deterrent force against Israel; his death dismantled Iran's first-response deterrent in Lebanon.
Bashar al-Assad
(non-Iranian, strategic partner)
Role:
President of Syria
Date of Death:
December 2024
(Overthrown and later killed by rebel forces)
Context:
Fell after years of civil war; Tehran failed to keep him in power
Impact:
Collapse of Iran's military foothold in Syria; severed arms and logistics pipeline to Hezbollah.
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.