The entire attack was illegal under international law: https://law.stanford.edu/2026/03/03/stanfords-allen-weiner-o...

https://www.newser.com/story/384710/legality-of-khameneis-ki...

His daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren were civilians. Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime. Even if they were not targeted directly, an attack is illegal if: it fails to minimize civilian harm, or the civilian casualties are disproportionate to the military advantage

International law is very clear on this point.

A law only has value if it can be enforced. Who's going to enforce this international law exactly?

I don't believe you can minimize civilian damage more than that, if a target is always among civilians. You can only push so much, like the pager attack was probably the most minimizing one, but obviously and unfortunately civilians still got caught.

For the international law part, interesting debate i think, where the state acts in self-defense if it has sustained an “armed attack” by its adversary;. Obviously this is very broad, but i think you can easily argue the last 40 year of fire exchanges as a continued armed attack.