Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spent almost four decades as Shi'ite Iran's supreme leader building a regional power to rival the Sunni states across the Gulf and implacably hostile to the U.S. and Israel - while crushing repeated unrest at home.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Tuesday warned Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that he could face a fate similar to that of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

The IDF said that Ali Shadmani’s elimination was part of a series of eliminations targeting Iran’s top military command, dealing another blow to the chain of command of Iran’s armed forces.