Katz: Israeli strike eliminates top Iranian official Ali Larijani
By JNS STAFF
(JNS.org) – The Israel Defense Forces on Monday eliminated senior Iranian security official Ali Larijani, believed to be responsible for ordering the killings of thousands of anti-regime protesters, Defense Minister Israel Katz said.
Defense Minister Israel Katz and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir at a military operations center, March 17, 2026. (Photo by Ariel Hermoni/Ministry of Defense.)
“I have just been updated by the chief of staff that Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and the head of the Basij—Iran’s central repression apparatus—[Gholamreza] Soleimani, were eliminated last night,” Katz said in remarks on Tuesday morning.
Larijani had long been a senior figure in Tehran’s power structures and recently served as secretary of its Supreme National Security Council, which has the final say over policies, including the nuclear program.<
“Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and I have instructed the IDF to continue pursuing the leadership of the terrorist and oppression regime in Iran, and to repeatedly cut off the head of the octopus and prevent it from regrowing,” said Katz, speaking during a situational assessment with IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir at the operations center.
U.S. President Donald Trump “spoke about the high turnover rate within Iran’s leadership,” Katz said. “When morning breaks in Washington, we will update him that the high rate of turnover is continuing and even accelerating following the elimination of two of the most senior remaining figures.”
The IDF continues to strike Iran with great intensity, “targeting regime assets, suppressing missile-launch capabilities, and destroying key strategic infrastructure in all domains, setting Iran back decades,” according to the Israeli defense minister.
The IDF, in a separate statement confirming Larijani’s death on Tuesday afternoon, noted that he was “considered one of the most veteran and senior figures in the Iranian regime leadership, and was a close associate of the [also slain] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.”
“During the most recent wave of protests against the Iranian terror regime, Larijani personally oversaw the massacre that was carried out against Iranian protestors,” according to the military statement.
Basij commander Soleimani led Iran’s “main repression operations, employing severe violence, widespread arrests and the use of force against civilian protesters,” according to an earlier IDF statement confirming his death. Soleimani headed the unit for six years.
His elimination “adds to that of dozens of senior commanders from the armed forces of the Iranian regime who have been eliminated during the operation, and constitutes an additional significant blow to the regime’s security command-and-control structures,” it concluded.
Basij militiamen took part in suppressing anti-regime protests earlier this year, with rights groups and eyewitnesses reporting their use of force—including live fire and mass arrests—against demonstrators.
On Monday, the IDF carried out a combined wave of airstrikes targeting Iranian regime assets across the Islamic Republic, including in Tehran, Shiraz and Tabriz, the army said in a separate statement on Tuesday.
The Israeli Air Force strikes, which covered a distance of some 700 miles across the country, were part of the IDF’s efforts focused on “deepening the damage to the Iranian terror regime’s core systems and weakening its capacity to threaten the State of Israel,” according to the statement.
During one of the strikes in Iran’s capital, “dozens” of bombs were dropped on command centers belonging to the regime’s internal security, including the Ministry of Intelligence and the Basij.
Additionally, military sites used to store and launch suicide drones, ballistic missiles and air defense systems were struck, the IDF said.
In the heart of Tehran, IAF jets hit “an intelligence command center of the Iranian regime that was established in the same compound as the Iranian electricity company, in the heart of Tehran,” the army stated.
In another “significant strike” in Tehran, the Israeli Air Force destroyed a Tehran site used by the regime to develop satellite attack capabilities.
“The compound was used to develop military space programs, including the development of the ‘Chamran-1’ satellite, which was built by the Iranian Defense Ministry’s electronics industries and launched into space in September 2024 by the IRGC,” according to the statement.
The site’s activities posed a threat to Israeli satellites “and space assets of other countries,” the IDF continued. “The dismantling of the compound adds to the strike carried out last week against another space-related research compound belonging to the Iranian Space Organization.”
In Shiraz, a command center of Iran’s internal security forces and a ballistic missile site were struck, while in Tabriz, regime air defense systems were bombed, “further expanding aerial superiority in the region and protecting the State of Israel,” per the IDF statement.
On Monday, the IDF announced that it “struck and dismantled” the IRGC’s naval headquarters during a wave of aerial attacks last week.
The site was located within a large Iranian regime military compound “and had been used by senior naval commanders for years to manage operational activity and advance maritime terrorist operations against the State of Israel and other countries across the Middle East,” it said.
The statement noted that the IRGC’s naval arm was “directly responsible for carrying out terror attacks against civilian vessels,” as well as arming and financing Tehran’s regional proxies by transferring weapons by sea.
The airstrikes “further degrades the IRGC’s naval command and control capabilities, while impairing its ability to execute terrorism against the State of Israel, threaten international trade routes and limit maritime freedom of navigation,” the statement added.
Zamir stated on Tuesday that “significant achievements were recorded overnight in Iran” as part of Jerusalem and Washington’s joint military campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran, launched on Feb. 28.
“Cooperation between the IDF and U.S. Central Command continues to strengthen,” Zamir declared during a situational assessment. “We will continue to act decisively to remove threats to the residents of Israel.”
United States forces have carried out more than 6,000 combat flights since the start of “Operation Epic Fury”—Washington’s codename for the war—CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said on Monday.
