BREAKING: Iranian leader and intelligence chief Ali Larijani has been killed in an Israeli strike. Last of Iran’s Leadership Decapitated – Could this be the end of Shia Rule in Iran? Iran has not issued confirmation

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Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani, had been killed in airstrikes overnight.

Katz said in a statement that he had been informed by the military that Larijani and the commander of Iran’s Basij forces, Gholamreza Soleimani, had both been killed, according to Reuters.

Iran has not yet confirmed the report.

A message attributed to Larijani was published on social media on Tuesday morning. The post showed a handwritten message commemorating sailors of Iran’s navy who had been killed, according to a Google translation.

Larijani was seen as the right-hand man of Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in strikes aimed at high-ranking Iranian officials at the beginning of the war on Feb. 28.

Iran has since retaliated by attacking its Gulf neighbors and targeting ships trying to pass through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/17/iran-war-ali-larijani-israel-united-states-middle-east-crisis.html

Ali Larijani’s alleged death may represent the decisive moment of regime collapse in Iran.

Formally designated by Khamenei himself as emergency crisis manager, Larijani was the last senior figure with the institutional authority, political relationships, and operational knowledge to hold a fractured leadership together.

With the Supreme Leader dead, the IRGC command decapitated, and now Larijani gone… Iran faces a leadership vacuum with no clear succession, no functional chain of command, and a war still actively being fought on its soil.

What happens inside Iran in the next 72 hours may determine the shape of the Middle East for the next 50 years.

Al Jazeera, Axios , TIME