Iranian state media Press TV said on Friday that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spokesman, Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naini, was killed in US-Israeli strikes.
The incident comes after several of Iran’s top leadership were killed in US-Israeli strikes following the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28.
On Thursday, Israel Defense Forces announced that they had killed Iran’s intelligence minister Ismail Khatib. The IDF said Khatib had carried out actions against Iranian civilians during the Mahsa Amini protests (2022–2023).
On Wednesday, the IDF said in a post on “(2022-2023). The Iranian Intelligence Ministry has advanced intelligence capabilities, capable of carrying out surveillance, espionage, and covert operations around the world, especially against Israeli and Iranian citizens.”
Earlier this week, Iranian security chief Ali Larijani and Basij paramilitary chief Gholamreza Soleimani were also killed in Israeli air strikes on Tuesday.
Pezeshkian condemned the “cowardly murders of my dear colleagues”, saying they had “broken our hearts”.
According to Al Jazeera, in a post on X he further said that “their path will move forward stronger than ever”.
Larijani, 67, a close aide of the late Ali Khamenei and his successor Mojtaba Khamenei, died in the attack on Monday night. It is the loss of the most senior figure in Tehran’s leadership since the conflict began 19 days ago.
Soleimani had led the internal security forces for six years and was considered a key figure in the military operation.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi insisted in an interview earlier this week that the country’s political structure remains a “very strong structure” and that the confirmed assassination of Ali Larijani would not deal “a fatal blow to Iran’s leadership.”
“I don’t know why the Americans and Israelis haven’t understood this yet: The Islamic Republic of Iran has a strong political structure with established political, economic and social institutions,” Araghchi said.
The Foreign Minister stressed that “the presence or absence of any one individual does not affect this structure.”
He said that although “individuals are influential, and each individual plays his or her own role – someone better, someone worse, someone less – but the important thing is that the political system in Iran is a very strong structure.”
Araghchi referred to the death of the country’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial phase of US-Israeli strikes on February 28. He said that despite this huge national loss, “the system” continued to work.
