The Israeli military on Tuesday announced it has eliminated Iran’s de facto leader, Ali Larijani, with an airstrike.
If the remnants of Iran’s government confirm his death, he will be the highest-level leader of the terrorist regime to be eliminated since Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei died in the first hour of the war, and he could prove to be a greater operational loss than the elderly cleric was.
“I was just informed by the Chief of Staff that the Secretary of the National Security Council, Larijani, and the head of the Basij — Iran’s main suppression body — Soleimani, were eliminated tonight and joined the head of the destruction plan, Khamenei, and all the thwarted members of the evil axis in the depths of hell,” Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday.
Gholamreza Soleimani was the commander of the Basij, the thuggish militia deployed by the Iranian regime to keep its people in line during uprisings.
Soleimani assumed command of the Basij six months ago, meaning he was in charge during Iran’s violent suppression of the “Bloody November” protests in 2019, the “Women, Life, Freedom” movement in 2022, and the massive popular uprising in January 2025. The regime admitted to murdering almost 10,000 of its own people to suppress the latest uprising and some observers believe the true death toll was over three times that high.
Soleimani, 61, was under sanctions from the United States, Canada, and the European Union for his part in brutally repressing the Iranian people.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Soleimani was eliminated by a “targeted strike yesterday in the heart of Tehran” that was “guided by precise intelligence.”
The IDF described Larijani as “the effective leader of the Iranian terror regime,” with a rap sheet that included “violent enforcement measures and repression operations,” including personal supervision of “the massacre that was carried out against Iranian protesters.”
Larijani, 67, brought scholarly credentials and a calm demeanor to his decades in the politics of the Islamic Republic. He was the consummate insider, born to a family so powerful and well-connected that it has been compared to the Kennedy dynasty in the United States.
The Larijani family popped up on American media’s radar during Iran’s brutal crackdown on protesters in January because Ali Larijani’s daughter Fatemeh held a position with Emory University in Georgia. The university severed its relationship with her in late January under intense public pressure as the death toll in the crackdown supervised by her father mounted.
Hellbound and Down 