‘Months of tracking movements and patterns’: How US found Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's exact location

On Saturday, February 28, around 8:10 a.m. local time in Tehran, Israeli fighter jets struck Beit Rahbari, also known as the House of Leadership, the official residence and office complex of the Supreme Leader of Iran.

After repeated denials throughout the day, on Saturday, on Sunday morning, Iran’s state media announced to the world that its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been killed in the US-Israeli operation.

US-Israeli operation that killed Khamenei

Saturday’s strike ended Khamenei’s nearly four-decade-long iron-fisted rule over Iran, even though the regime continues to fight back.

The strike on Saturday, in which Israeli fighter jets dropped 30 bombs on the compound, was the culmination of months of meticulous planning by intelligence agencies.

‘Highly sophisticated tracking’

Although the exact details of how they did it are unknown, US President Donald Trump hinted that they have been tracking him closely.

“He was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he, or the other leaders that have been killed along with him, could do,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Tracking Khamenei for months

According to The New York Times, the CIA had been tracking Ayatollah Khamenei for months, gaining more confidence about his locations and his patterns. This behavioral analysis allowed agencies to gain "high fidelity" on his likely locations and daily routines.

Meeting that sealed the fate

However, the most crucial information came hours before - a meeting of top Iranian officials at a leadership compound, where the supreme leader would be present.

The information provided a “window of opportunity” for the two countries to achieve “a critical and early victory: the elimination of top Iranian officials and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei,” the report said. The CIA passed its intelligence, described as offering “high fidelity” on Khamenei’s position, to Israel, according to people briefed on the operation.

Based on this information, the US and Israel planned the attack, which also signaled the launch of a wider campaign.

According to the reports, the governments of the United States and Israel had originally planned to launch the attack at night but shifted to a daylight strike after learning of the leadership gathering in Tehran.

ABC News also corroborated the chain of events that led to the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei and said the CIA had been tracking him for months

When they learned there would be a meeting of top leaders on Saturday with the Supreme leader, the timing of the attack was moved, a source told ABC News, adding that the agency had high confidence in their analysis.

ABC News also reported that Israel had been planning for months with its own intelligence to target Iranian leadership.

'US used Claude'

Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported that the attack was carried out with the assistance of “Claude,” an artificial intelligence tool developed by the company Anthropic, just hours after the federal administration announced it was terminating its contract with the firm and labeling it a “security threat.”

According to WSJ, military headquarters around the world, including the United States Central Command in the Middle East, are using Claude “for intelligence assessments, target identification, and battle scenario simulations.”