New details from Irans top diplomat about the strike that killed Supreme Leader provide some of the clearest evidence yet of the precision and strategy behind the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that launched Operation Epic Fury, counterterrorism experts said Sunday.
The account, revealed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a new television interview, also highlights what analysts describe as a defining feature of President s national security doctrine: using a decapitation strike against a hostile regime while simultaneously creating an off-ramp to end the conflict.
“Well, the building we were sitting in was targeted, but the wing we were in remained intact while the other wing of the building was destroyed,” Araghchi said in an interview that aired June 4 on the Lebanon-based, Hezbollah-backed Al Mayadeen television network.
While Araghchi survived the Feb. 28 strike because he was in a different wing of Khamenei’s compound when the attack occurred, he went on to detail how Khamenei was in his office and how others survived.
Reviewing the original segment, counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital that Araghchis account confirms the operation targeted a specific section of the complex rather than flattening the entire site.
“In the Arabic version, Araghchi says he was in a different wing of the compound, briefing another official, and his wing survived while the leaders office was destroyed,” Mohammed explained.
Araghchi also told the interviewer that he had an appointment that day with an official at the compound regarding the Geneva negotiations and that, based on the usual workflow, Khamenei “had to be present in his office.”
Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, added that if Araghchis account is accurate, this was Iran’s glaring acknowledgment of U.S. strategic capabilities.
“They did not flatten a building; they took one wing and left the one next to it standing. That is President Trumps whole doctrine in a single strike â he does not want a war of occupation, he wants to show the can reach the center of a hostile regime with precision and then offer it a way out,” Mohammed said.
The daylight strike on elder Khameneis compound was carried out by with 30 precision munitions alongside Sparrow air-launched ballistic missiles.
Military officials confirmed that a precise strike sequence Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Mohammed Pakpour and multiple top security leaders.
Khameneis killing in a post on social media at the time.
“He was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems, and, , there was not a thing he or the other leaders killed alongside him could do,” the president wrote.
“Iran was handed the clearest message an adversary can get â we can reach your leader in his own office, and here is the off-ramp,” Mohammed noted. “A rational state takes the exit. Tehran did the opposite. It fired on Israel, killed a civilian in Bahrain, struck Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and closed the Strait of Hormuz, setting off a global energy crisis. The surgical strike was American. The months-long war that followed was Iran’s choice.”
Following the leadership transition, Ali Khamenei’s son, , became Iran’s new supreme leader.
He has since been involved in back-channel discussions with the U.S. while maintaining a confrontational public stance.
“In Arabic, Araghchi calls the new leader the young Khamenei in place of the elderly Khamenei. That is the language of a monarchy, not a republic of clerics,”
