(AFP) – Israel killed another top Iranian official, intelligence minister Esmail Khatib, and declared on Wednesday that its military is authorized to kill any senior Islamic Republic figure it gets in its sights. Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian branded Khatib’s death a “cowardly assassination.”
The war erupted on February 28 when US and Israeli forces attacked Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has since been marked by several high-profile killings. News of Khatib’s death came the day after Iranian security chief Ali Larijani was confirmed killed in an Israeli strike. “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorized the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the intelligence and operational circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz announced. “We will continue to thwart them and to hunt them all down.” Israel has also vowed to hunt down Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since he succeeded his father.
Large crowds gathered in central Tehran on Wednesday for the funerals of Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force who was also killed in a strike in Iran this week, according to images broadcast by Iranian state television. They were held alongside the funerals of more than 80 Iranian sailors killed in a US torpedoing of their frigate off Sri Lanka earlier this month. Trucks carrying coffins draped in Iranian flags moved through the procession, as mourners walked alongside carrying portraits of the slain supreme leader and beating their chests, a sign of mourning in Shia culture.
In contrast to Mojtaba Khamenei, Larijani, 68, had walked openly with crowds at a pro-government rally last week in Tehran. He had “effectively been the figure in charge of the regime’s survival, its regional policy and its defence strategy,” David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, told AFP. Israel has pursued what analysts have described as a policy of decapitation against Iran and the militant movements it backs in the region. It killed Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader of Hezbollah, in 2024 as well as Hamas’s top figures since the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
Despite losing its supreme leader of nearly four decades and now Larijani, a key pillar of the Islamic Republic, the powerful Revolutionary Guards and the leadership as a whole have remained defiant. US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard stated at a Senate hearing that Washington “assesses the regime in Iran to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities.” The Guards, the ideological arm of the military, said they had launched missiles at central Israel in retaliation for Larijani’s death and warned of more to come. The “pure blood of this great martyr… will be a source of honour, power and national awakening against the front of global arrogance,” they said.
An Iranian missile barrage killed two people near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, medics said on Wednesday, while authorities stated that falling munitions hit multiple sites in central Israel overnight. Police reported that a cluster bomb hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, a city just outside Tel Aviv, causing the roof to collapse on an elderly couple. Iranian media meanwhile stated that Israel and the United States had launched fresh strikes across several areas of the country, including Tehran.
Tasnim news agency said, “seven people were killed and 56 were injured in an American-Zionist attack on residential areas in Dorud town” in Lorestan province. AFP could not independently verify the figures. The war has engulfed the region, from Gulf nations to Iraq and nearby Lebanon. In Lebanon, Israel struck central Beirut multiple times Wednesday, with authorities reporting at least 12 people dead. The country was drawn into the conflict when the Iran-backed group Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel following the ayatollah’s death.
A line of cars stretched as far as the eye could see along the country’s southern coast as residents of areas bombarded in the war fled to the ancient city of Sidon in search of safety. Nidal Ahmad Chokr initially intended to stay put but finally decided on Tuesday to leave his village of Jibchit as the air strikes intensified. “Bakers died while making bread” in the village square and “municipal workers were martyred while using bulldozers,” the 55-year-old said.
In addition to the human toll of the war, with hundreds killed and millions displaced, the conflict has hit the global economy. Oil prices surged again Wednesday after Israeli strikes hit Iranian facilities at a major gas field in the oil-rich Gulf, prompting Tehran to call for retaliatory attacks on energy infrastructure. The conflict has led to the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway through which a fifth of global oil and LNG travels in peacetime.
burs-sr/dc – AFP teams in Jerusalem, Tehran, Beirut, and Washington.
© 2024 AFP
