Israel says it killed Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official and close ally of Khamenei

Ali Larijani speaks during a joint press conference with his Iraqi counterpart Salim al-Juburi (unseen) following a meeting on Dec. 24, 2014 in the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Photo by ALI AL-SAADI/AFP

(JTA) — The Israeli military announced on Tuesday that it had killed Ali Larijani, a top Iranian security official who was believed to be leading the country, in an overnight strike.

While Iran has not yet confirmed or denied the death of Larijani, the announcement suggests a significant blow to the Iranian regime’s  leadership structure of Iran which is still reeling from the assassination of its supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last month.

Larijani, who was a close confidant of Khamenei, had run Iran behind the scenes prior to Khamenei’s death, leading the deadly crackdown on protesters in the country early this year. While Larijani was ineligible to replace Khamenei because he is not a Shiite cleric, he was widely expected to serve as a top adviser in Iran.

In the wake of Khamenei’s death, the regime appointed his son, Mojtaba, as its new supreme leader, but he has not been seen in public, and Israel and the United States both suspect that he was wounded. Larijani reportedly opposed Mojtaba’s installation, instead lobbying for a more moderate choice.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described Larijani as the head of a group that “effectively runs Iran,” adding that Israel was “undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it.”

The IDF also said on Tuesday that it had killed Basij paramilitary force commander Gholamreza Soleimani in a separate strike. In a post on X announcing his death, the Israeli military said that the Basij unit, a militia unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had “led the main repression operations in Iran.”

The killings marked the first major assassinations since the war’s first day, when Khamenei and dozens of others were killed in a strike on a building where they were meeting.

“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,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday morning, according to his office.

The death of the two Iranian leaders comes as pressure has mounted on President Donald Trump to signal when the war with Iran will end. On Monday, Trump said that he was open to talks with Iran, but added that “we don’t even know their leaders,” because some officials the United States knew had been killed.

“We have people wanting to negotiate,” Trump said. “We have no idea who they are.”