In a dramatic account of the opening moments of the war, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi shed light Sunday on the conditions that enabled the assassination of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, claiming the precision strike on the compound where the leader was staying was no accident—but the result of a strategic intelligence leak.
1+Araghchi, who was present at Khamenei’s residential compound the morning of the attack, reconstructed the sequence of events: “At 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, I met with the president and told him, ‘There’s a war atmosphere.'” According to the foreign minister, sensitive information was typically not conveyed directly to Khamenei, but rather through his chief of staff, Ali Asghar Mir Hejazi. “We would usually deliver the reports to Mr. Hejazi, and he would pass them on to the Supreme Leader,” Araghchi explained.
The minister described the moments before the explosion: “At 9:00 a.m., I met with Mr. Hejazi and handed him the negotiation report. I spoke with him about the tense war atmosphere, and at that very moment the place was attacked.”
Beyond describing the dramatic moments, Araghchi leveled a serious accusation against his country’s security apparatus. According to him, the very fact that meetings were held at the compound wasn’t unusual—what was unusual was that the enemy knew the exact timing and location of the meetings: “The fact that the enemy knew about the existence of the meetings was the result of an intelligence breach that apparently still exists and has not been resolved.”
1+The assassination of Ali Khamenei at the start of the war marked a historic turning point that shook the foundations of Iran’s regime. Since that fateful morning, Tehran has grappled with repeated attempts to locate those responsible for intelligence leaks within the senior command ranks. Araghchi’s remarks constitute official confirmation from a senior official that even today, months after the incident, Iran operates under the heavy shadow of fear—of spies or technological breaches allowing its adversaries access to the leadership’s most sensitive information.