Ali Khamenei: ruthless revolutionary who held Iran in iron grip

Ali Khamenei suppressed dissent, kept up confrontation with the US and steered a path between competing political factions in over three-and-a-half decades as Iran's supreme leader.But his domination of the Islamic republic came to an abrupt and bloody end on the morning of February 28, when he was killed along with several close family members in an Israeli air strike based on US intelligence on the first day of a five-week war.