Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran last year. He was born in 1939 into a religious family of modest means and rose quickly in the regime that took power after the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Hezbollah, Iran’s most powerful regional ally, has signaled privately that it does not intend to attack Israel, but Lebanon’s military has bolstered its presence in the country’s south to prevent rocket fire.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, was among the dead, according to Iranian state media. Officials said a top nuclear negotiator was also killed.
The airstrikes on the southern outskirts of the Lebanese capital, an area where Hezbollah holds sway, were some of the heaviest since a U.S.-brokered cease-fire came into effect in November.
Damascus last month. Syria was exempted from President Trump’s latest travel ban, a sign of a seismic shift in U.S. foreign policy following the toppling of President Bashar al-Assad in December.
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