Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday that Iranian security chief Ali Larijani was killed in an overnight airstrike on Tehran.
“Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated overnight and joined … in the depths of hell,” Israel Katz said during a morning assessment Tuesday, according to several Israeli media reports.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed at the outset of the conflict in late February in joint U.S.-Israeli strikes, plunging the country into a leadership crisis and triggering a widening regional war.
His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, has since taken over, though he has not appeared publicly. U.S. President Donald Trump cast doubt on his health Monday, saying: “We don’t know … if he’s dead or not. I will say that nobody has seen him, which is unusual.”
The conflict has since expanded across the region, with Israeli airstrikes hitting Beirut and Tehran, and missile and drone exchanges spreading across the Gulf, where Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait have reported interceptions of Iranian projectiles.