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If the death of Esmaeil Khatib is confirmed, it would be the third major high-profile assassination of Iranian leaders in successive days.
Published On 18 Mar 2026
Defence Minister Israel Katz says Israel has killed Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib. Tehran has not commented on or confirmed the attack.
If the claim announced on Wednesday is confirmed, it would be the third assassination of high-ranking Iranian leaders in two days.
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Iranian security chief Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij paramilitary force, were killed in Israeli air strikes on Tuesday. Iran will hold funerals on Wednesday for both men.
The country’s foreign minister insisted that Larijani’s killing will not deal a fatal blow to Iran’s leadership.
In an interview with Al Jazeera aired after the killing of Larijani was confirmed by Tehran on Tuesday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States and Israel had yet to realise that Iran’s government does not rely on a single individual.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the occupied West Bank, said Israeli military analysts regarded Khatib as having been a trusted figure close to Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
“According to Israeli sources, they said they have been gathering intelligence that allowed them in the past 24 hours to declare the deaths of three senior Iranian officials,” Ibrahim said.
Katz also announced that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given the Israeli military standing authorisation to eliminate other senior Iranian officials in their sights without case-by-case approval.
“This is seen as another success from the Israeli perspective in targeting the Iranian leadership,” she said.
On Tuesday, Iran confirmed the deaths of Larijani, the powerful secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, and Soleimani, commander of the Basij, the internal paramilitary force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Larijani had been one of Iran’s most influential political operators, having previously led its nuclear negotiations with the West and serving as speaker of parliament.
Targeted killings are a strategy Israel has pursued against its adversaries for years.
Numerous Hamas leaders inside and outside of Gaza have been assassinated, following a pattern of assassinations of Palestinian leaders stretching back decades.
Longtime Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and former Houthi Prime Minister Ahmed Rahawi in Yemen have been killed, and Israeli officials have signalled that such strikes will continue.
Since launching their war on Iran on February 28, Israel and the United States have systematically removed much of Iran’s top tier of military and political leaders, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the opening day of the war along with several of his family members.
