He is the son of assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
President Donald Trump announced "major combat operations" against Iran on Feb. 28, with massive joint U.S.-Israel strikes attack targeting military and government sites, officials said.
Iranian state television confirmed that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among those killed by airstrikes in Tehran on the first day of strikes. His successor is yet to be named.
Iran is responding to the operation with missile and drone attacks targeting Israel, regional U.S. bases and multiple Gulf nations. Israel is also intensifying its long-running strike campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.
(Read previous Iran live updates here.)
Watch special coverage on Nightline, "War with Iran," each night on ABC and streaming on Disney+ and Hulu.
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said Wednesday that the Iranian death toll from the ongoing U.S.-Israeli military operation had risen to 1,045, citing the state-funded Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs.
-ABC News’ Morgan Winsor
Two Israeli sources briefed on the matter told ABC News on Wednesday that Israel had killed Rahman Makdem, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' special operations division who was alleged to have been behind the attempted assassination of President Donald Trump in 2024.
The location of the killing was not immediately clear. Trump was informed of the operation by the Israelis, the sources said.
-ABC News’ Jordana Miller and Joe Simonetti
Turkey's Defense Ministry on Wednesday said in a statement posted to X that "a ballistic missile fired from Iran" was "engaged and neutralized by NATO air and missile defense elements deployed in the Eastern Mediterranean."
The missile overflew Iraq and Syria before being intercepted, the ministry said.
Israeli strikes bombarded Lebanon's capital again on Wednesday morning, as the Israeli military issued a number of evacuation warnings for parts of Beirut and huge swathes of southern Lebanon.
The strikes on Beirut were concentrated on the densely populated southern suburbs, including Dahiyeh, a Hezbollah stronghold.
In Hazmieh, another southern neighborhood of Beirut, the Comfort Hotel was struck without warning before dawn Wednesday, a local council member told ABC News, confirming what Lebanese state media had been reporting.
ABC News has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the hotel strike.
The IDF on Wednesday also ordered all residents of southern Lebanon south of the Litani River -- which is around 18 miles north of the border with Israel -- to evacuate to the north.
The IDF said in a Wednesday post to X that it targeted "an underground Hezbollah weapon storage facility and additional command centers in Beirut."
-ABC News' Ghazi Balkiz, Morgan Winsor and Dorit Long
