Benjamin Netanyahu has been pictured ordering the assassination of top Iranian official Ali Larijani who was killed in an airstrike overnight.
Larijani, 67, the secretary of the regime’s National Security Council, is the highest profile figure killed since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war.
The IDF said it killed Larijani, Iran‘s ‘stand-in leader’, in strikes which reportedly targeted his Tehran safe house and also eliminated Basij paramilitary force commander Gholamreza Soleimani.
The office of the Israeli Prime Minister released a picture of Mr Netanyahu taking a phone call while sat next to a military chief, captioned: ‘Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders the elimination of senior figures in the Iranian regime.’
Israel‘s defence minister Israel Katz said: ‘Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined the head of the annihilation program, Khamenei, and all the eliminated members of the axis of evil, in the depths of hell.’
Larijani last week warned Donald Trump to ‘take care not to be eliminated’ before taunting the US President for his ‘grave miscalculation’.
Marching through the streets of Tehran, in an attempted display of strength, the security chief dismissed the Israeli-US attacks on the capital as being ‘out of desperation’.
‘These attacks are out of fear, out of desperation. One who is strong wouldn’t bomb demonstrations at all. It’s clear that it has failed,’ Larijani told state TV at the Quds Day march.
Israel released an image of Benjamin Netanyahu ordering the assassination of the Iranian figures
Israel claims to have assassinated top Iranian official Ali Larijani in an airstrike overnight
Striking a defiant tone, he said Trump ‘doesn’t understand that the Iranian people are a brave nation, a strong nation, a determined nation. The more he presses, the stronger the nation’s determination will become.’
Larijani said Trump would be ‘sorry’ for his ‘grave miscalculation’ after the President declared the US had won the war.
His attendance at the march was one of the most high-profile public appearances by an Iranian official since the beginning of the war.
Larijani was viewed as the late Ayatollah Khamenei’s right-hand man and led nuclear negotiations with the US as well as the regime’s day-to-day security operations.
He was attacked with his son in a hideout apartment, according to Israeli media.
Iranian authorities said Larijani was due to give a public address on Tuesday.
And after Israel confirmed Larijani’s death, a handwritten note was posted on his social media channels.
Shared by the Iranian state media channel, it showed Larijani paying tribute to Iranian sailors killed in a US attack whose funeral is expected to be held on Tuesday.
Larijani has been the Islamic Republic’s loudest voice, repeatedly mocking Trump and Israel throughout the war.
The Iranian official, a former IRGC commander and speaker of parliament, was given responsibility for negotiations with the West in the weeks before the war started.
While on March 1, he said he would be heading an interim committee for running the country.
Born in Najaf, Iraq in 1957 to a prominent Shia cleric who was close to the Islamic Republic’s founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Larijani’s family has been influential within Iran’s political system for decades.
A veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iran-Iraq war, Larijani later headed state broadcasting IRIB for a decade from 1994 before serving as parliamentary speaker from 2008 to 2020.
Larijani last week warned Donald Trump to ‘take care not to be eliminated’ before taunting the US President for his ‘grave miscalculation’
In 1996, he was appointed as Khamenei’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council
Larijani ran in the 2005 presidential elections, losing to populist candidate Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with whom he later had disagreements over nuclear diplomacy. Larijani was then disqualified from running for president in both 2021 and 2024.
‘Larijani is a true insider, a canny operator, familiar with how the system operates,’ Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s project director for Iran, said before the Middle East war began.
The IDF also confirmed it had assassinated the head of the IRGC Basij paramilitary militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, who ordered the slaughter of thousands of anti-government protesters in January.
He and his deputy, Seyyed Karishi, were killed in a makeshift tent area, which had been set up to make it harder to follow them as opposed to in a known headquarters.
The military also announced that it killed the IRGC’s Aerospace Force chief.
‘In a precise strike in Tehran: The IDF eliminated the Commander of the Basij Unit,’ the Israeli military said.
‘Yesterday (Monday), the Israeli Air Force, acting on IDF intelligence, targeted and eliminated Gholamreza Soleimani, who operated as commander of the Basij unit for the past six years,’ it added.
The Basij, a volunteer force under Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, ‘led the main repression operations’ by the authorities during recent mass protests in Iran, the Israeli army said.
Iran was rocked by unprecedented protests against the clerical establishment that peaked in January.
The IDF also confirmed it had assassinated the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Basij paramilitary militia, Gholamreza Soleimani
They were met with a crackdown which led to the massacre and arrest of tens of thousands of Iranian citizens.
Soleimani operated as commander of the Basij unit for the past six years.
The US Treasury lists Soleimani as having been born in 1965. He has been sanctioned by the US, the European Union and other nations over his role in helping suppress dissent for years through the Basij.
Israel’s military chief Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir said ‘significant preventive achievements were recorded overnight’ in a statement released earlier by the military.
Meanwhile an Iranian drone struck a major oil terminal in the UAE today resulting in the second fire in as many days after the complex was attacked on Monday.
Oil loading operations were temporarily suspended at Fujairah, which sits on the Gulf of Oman, yesterday after the facility was hit causing a fire to break out. Authorities in the UAE say another blaze has broken out today.
‘Civil defence teams from the emirate intervened immediately on site and are continuing their efforts to bring the situation under control,’ the authorities said in a statement on X.
