Iran's top security official and the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij militia were both killed in overnight strikes in a blow to the country’s leadership, Israel's defense minister said Tuesday, while Tehran defiantly fired new salvos of missiles and drones at its Gulf Arab neighbors and Israel.
Both security official Ali Larijani and Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani were “eliminated last night," Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement. Iran's 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei died in an airstrike Feb. 28, the first day of the war launched by the United States and Israel, and other top leaders from the Iranian theocracy have been killed since then.
Iranian state media did not immediately confirm either death. However, it said a message from Larijani’s office would be published shortly.
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The announcement came after the Israeli military had earlier said it had carried out a “wide-scale wave of strikes” across Iran’s capital and stepped up strikes on Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Israel also reported two incoming salvos before dawn from Iran at Tel Aviv and elsewhere, and said Hezbollah targeted Israel’s north.
Incoming Iranian missiles on the United Arab Emirates prompted Dubai, a major transit hub for international travel, to briefly shut its airspace and a man was killed by the debris of a missile intercepted over Abu Dhabi.
Israel says it has killed two top Iranian officials
Larijani hails from one of Iran’s most famous political families. A former parliamentary speaker and senior policy adviser, he was appointed to advise the late Khamenei on strategy in nuclear talks with the Trump administration.
He also served as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, its top security body.
Soleimani, meantime, was the head of the Basij militia forces, which Israel's military called an “armed apparatus of the Iranian terror regime.”
“During internal protests in Iran, particularly in recent periods as demonstrations intensified, Basij forces under Soleimani’s command led the main repression operations, employing severe violence, widespread arrests and the use of force against civilian demonstrators,” Israel's military said in a statement.
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The U.S. Treasury lists Soleimani as having been born in 1965. He has been sanctioned by the U.S., the European Union and other nations over his role in helping suppress dissent for years through the Basij.
Killing Soleimani would likely further strain the command and control of the Basij, which would be crucial in putting down any uprising against the theocracy. The Basij and other internal security forces have been a target of attack by both the Americans and the Israelis so far.
Iranian strikes pressure neighbors and oil markets
Iran kept up the pressure on the energy infrastructure of its Gulf Arab neighbors, hitting an oil facility in Fujairah, a UAE emirate on the country’s east coast with the Gulf of Oman that has been repeatedly targeted. State-run WAM news reported that no one had been injured in the blast from the drone strike.
The man killed by falling debris from an intercepted missile was the eighth person to die in the UAE since the start of the war, authorities said.
Iran's attacks on Gulf nations and its grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil is transported, has given rise to increasing concerns of a global energy crisis. Early Tuesday it hit a tanker anchored off the coast of Fujairah, one of about 20 vessels hit since Israel and the United States started the war with an attack on Iran on Feb. 28.
Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said his country had been given no choice but to keep up its pressure on shipping traffic in the strait.
“They are flying, launching missiles, should we just sit back and do nothing in response?" he said in an interview on state television.
With Washington under increasing pressure over rising oil prices, Brent crude, the international standard, remained over $100 a barrel, up more than 40% since the war started.
U.S. President Donald Trump said he had demanded that roughly a half-dozen countries send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open. But his appeals brought no immediate commitments, with many saying they are hesitant to get involved in a war with no defined exit plan and skeptical that they could do more than the U.S. Navy.
