Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, was killed in an overnight Israeli strike, Israel's Defense Minister, Israel Katz, announced Tuesday. The 67-year-old regime official was eliminated alongside Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard's Basij force, who was taken out in a separate targeted strike on Tehran.
Days earlier, Larijani had been on television goading the United States and Israel. He told an interviewer, in reference to Operation Epic Fury, that "it's clear they're running out of steam." He said President Trump "doesn't understand that the Iranian nation is mature and determined."
Now he's dead.
According to the New York Post, Larijani's final days were a masterclass in miscalculation. Last Friday, he marched through the streets of Tehran alongside Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi at a rally marking the pro-Palestinian Quds Day holiday. That same day, the State Department's Rewards for Justice program placed a $10 million bounty on his head, naming him one of 10 Islamic Republic officials targeted.
He responded Sunday by quoting Hussein Ibn Ali, an early Shia Islamic leader:
I do not see death as anything but happiness, nor life with the oppressors as anything but torment.
Last week, after President Trump threatened more powerful attacks on Iran over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Larijani wrote publicly that "Iran does not fear your paper threats." He added that "even those greater than you could not eliminate the Iranian nation." Then, in a line that reads differently now, he warned: "Watch out for yourself — lest you be eliminated!"
The Israeli Defense Forces eliminated him instead.
Larijani's death follows the Feb. 28 killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself. Since then, there has been intense speculation about the health and whereabouts of Khamenei's son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. The regime's leadership bench is thinning at a rate that would have seemed unthinkable even months ago.
Defense Minister Katz did not mince words about the significance of the strikes:
Larijani and the Basij commander were eliminated last night.
He added that the two had "joined Khamenei, the head of the annihilation program, along with all those eliminated from the axis of evil in the depths of hell."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office posted an image of him on the phone Tuesday morning, with a caption stating he was "ordering the elimination of senior Iranian regime officials." The message was not subtle. It was not meant to be.
Larijani was not a fringe figure. He served as senior advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader and had been appointed to advise the late Khamenei on strategy in nuclear talks with the Trump administration. He sat at the center of the regime's decision-making apparatus on the issues that mattered most: nuclear weapons, internal suppression, and confrontation with the West.
The Treasury Department had sanctioned him in January as Tehran violently suppressed nationwide protests. The department's assessment was blunt:
Larijani was one of the first Iranian leaders to call for violence in response to the legitimate demands of the Iranian people.
He was also described as "responsible for coordinating the response to the protests on behalf of the supreme leader of Iran." The IDF noted that the Basij forces under Soleimani's command, the same Soleimani killed alongside Larijani, "led key suppression operations involving severe violence, widespread arrests, and the use of force against civilian protesters."
These were not men caught in collateral damage. These were men who built careers on brutalizing their own citizens and threatening their neighbors.
There is a pattern with the Iranian regime that Western observers have struggled to name for decades, but that events are now illustrating in real time. The pattern is this: the regime mistakes its own rhetoric for reality. Larijani quoted poetry about welcoming death. He wrote open letters daring the most powerful military alliance on the planet to try him. He walked through Tehran's streets as if the $10 million bounty on his head was a badge of honor rather than a targeting designation.
And then the strike came overnight, and Iranian state media did not immediately confirm either death.
That silence is its own story. A regime that broadcasts every grievance, that stages every rally, that films every chant, suddenly had nothing to say about two of its most senior officials being pulled from the board in a single night.
The trajectory is unmistakable. Since late February, Israel has systematically dismantled Iran's senior leadership structure. The Supreme Leader is dead. His top security advisor is dead. The commander of the regime's primary domestic enforcement arm is dead. The speculation around Mojtaba Khamenei's status adds another layer of uncertainty to a regime that once projected an image of permanence.
The funerals of sailors killed in a U.S. attack were already expected on Tuesday. Now Tehran must bury two more of its most prominent officials, at a moment when the men who would normally organize the regime's response are the very men being buried.
Larijani spent his final week telling the world that Iran's enemies were "running out of steam." He promised that the Iranian nation could not be eliminated. He quoted a warrior-saint about the happiness of death.
He got one of those things right.
