Israel says it killed two top Iranian leaders

[Twiglets1]

Israel says it has killed Iran's security chief Ali Larijani, saying he was effectively Iran's top leader. His death, if confirmed, would be a "massive body blow" to the regime, says Jeremy Bowen.

The commander of the Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was also killed in an overnight strike, Israel said. The much-feared militia is a plain-clothes section of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corp, which was involved in the brutal crackdown of anti-government protests earlier this year.

Israel's foreign minister, Gideon Saar, says "Iranians are safer" without top security official Ali Larijani and Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani, after the Israeli military says it killed both of them in strikes.

Speaking in Jerusalem, Saar says Israel is weakening Iran's "repression mechanism". He adds that the regime can only be toppled by the Iranian people but that cannot be done without external help.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cx2lr40g17kt

Summer of 2025, Israel killed at least 20 senior Iranian commanders and 6 nuclear scientists.
https://nypost.com/2025/06/13/world-news/here-are-the-top-iranian-leaders-killed-in-israels-precision-airstrikes-including-revolutionary-guard-leader-gen-hossein-salami/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lk5j18k4vo

What followed was the more brutal oppression of the Iranian people, with thousands to tens of thousands of protesters and regular civilians arrested and killed depending different reports as the country has clamped down on information getting out.

Iran: UN expert warns of escalating repression and record executions after June attacks https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/iran-un-expert-warns-escalating-repression-and-record-executions-after-june

I am not sure doing the same thing now in 2026 will have a different result, and I’m not alone in that, as the UN has issued a report stating that air strikes aimed at assassinating leaders results in escalating oppression and violation of human rights. If the same pattern is repeated, Israel and the US are not weakening the regime, they are strengthening it.
https://iranhumanrights.org/2026/03/un-fact-finding-mission-warns-irans-human-rights-crisis-could-worsen-amid-regional-conflict/

https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iran/2026/03/iran-260316-ohchr01.htm

I believe the general view is that the Iranian regime was weakened by the 12 day war in June 2025. It was this that partly emboldened the US and Israel to wage another war against Iran, which is further weakening the regime.

An arsenal built over decades, dismantled in days

Iranian ballistic missile launches have fallen by more than 90 percent from 350 on February 28 to roughly 25 by March 14, according to publicly available data. Drone launches tell the same story: from more than 800 on Day 1 to about 75 on Day 15.

The figures drawn from US and Iranian military statements differ in detail but converge on the trajectory. Hundreds of Iranian missile launchers have been rendered inoperable. According to some reports, 80 percent of Iran’s capacity to strike Israel has been eliminated.

Iran’s naval assets, fast-attack craft, midget submarines and mine-laying capabilities are being liquidated. Its air defences have been suppressed to the point at which the US is now flying nonstealth B-1 bombers over Iranian airspace, a decision that signals near-total confidence in air dominance.

The campaign has moved through two distinct phases. The first suppressed Iran’s air defences, decapitated its command and control, and degraded its missile and drone launch infrastructure. By March 2, US Central Command announced local air superiority over western Iran and Tehran, achieved without the confirmed loss of a single American or Israeli combat aircraft.

The second phase, now under way, targets Iran’s defence industrial base: missile production facilities, dual-use research centres and the underground complexes where remaining stockpiles are stored. This is not aimless bombing. It is a methodical campaign to ensure that what has been destroyed cannot be rebuilt.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/3/16/the-us-israeli-strategy-against-iran-is-working-here-is-why

Missiles are how they attack other countries.
The pace of missile launches and destroyed missile launchers is irrelevant to how powerful or weak the regime is internally in oppressing its own citizens.
They don’t use missiles on their own people.

All those military personnel that used to work on these missile sites are now free to hunt down Israeli/US spies and sympathisers.

The Guardian's take on this story is that the death of influential Ali Larijani could be a bigger loss to Iran than Khamenei.

In any attempt to decapitate the Iranian leadership, Larijani would always be the prime target, largely because of his ability to straddle so many levels of Iranian politics and his huge personal influence not just in Iran but with foreign states including China and Russia.

Indeed, there has been probably no greater loss for the Iranian regime since the US assassination of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Suleimani in Baghdad in January 2020.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/17/ali-larijani-influence-iran-profile

Twiglets, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you link to Al Jazeera before? You consider it to be a reliable source?

True, loss when attempting to decapitate the leadership as the Guardian put it. But the question is whether decapitating leadership is enough to weaken an entire regime that is theocratic and inherited?

Its an experiment that failed last year and if it doesn’t work isn’t it something like 1,000 Iranians dead for every leader killed? It’s risky and I don’t like the human cost.

I do occasionally link to Al Jazeera, this is certainly not the first time I have done so. It is biased of course but that doesn't mean I stop reading it because I think all media sources are biased including the ones I mostly link to like the BBC and the Telegraph. I believe that the best thing is to read a wide range of sources and make your own mind up where you think the truth lies.

I have seen other sources say similar things about the reduction in Iranian ballistic missile launches and drone launches. The Institute of War for example has this to say on the 15th March:

The war in Iran is currently in a phase in which the military trajectory is relatively positive: the United States is steadily destroying Iran’s ability to use its most essential tool in the war — drone and missile attacks — which in turn underpin the entire Iranian strategy. Iran has still done some damage to US forces, and it is still firing drones and missiles, though the overall attack rate is slowly decreasing.

https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/the-war-in-iran-operational-progress-but-challenges-remain/

Twiglets that's really interesting thank you .

Iranian authorities have now confirmed the deaths of both men, according to the BBC.

Iran's intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib, has been killed, according to the Israeli defence minister.

His reported death comes after Tehran confirmed the killings of the country's powerful national security chief, Ali Larijani, and the head of the IRGC's Basij paramilitary force.

Khatib was among the officials that the US was seeking information on last week, offering a reward of up to $10m.

The reward targeted 10 officials associated with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and also security chief Ali Larijani, who was killed on Monday, and the new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.

news.sky.com/story/iran-war-latest-trump-tehran-israel-strikes-us-drone-live-sky-news-13509565

Al Jazeera wrote, In terms of his position within the power structure, Khatib ticked every box. He was a graduate of Qom, and one of his teachers was the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. So he was really one of the top scholars.

He also held the title of Hujjat al-Islam, which means “the proof of Islam”. That is one of the highest religious titles in the country.

https://risingkashmir.com/irans-intelligence-minister-esmail-khatib-killed-in-strikes-israel/

Those protests were because they don’t want to be oppressed for longer. There were many young people protesting.

If say a 20 year old who protested against the IRGC asked you what can we do to get out from under this what would you say?

Keep protesting. From what the human rights experts say, it is the unprovoked bombing of Iran and assassination of their leaders that is causing the regime to harden and become more oppressive. The protesters are then the scapegoats of their anger towards the US/Israel as well as a fair measure of paranoia that some protesters are spies or bought off by the US/Israel to foment rebellion.

The current supreme leader, Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, is reported to be even more harsh and anti west and anti Women’s rights than his father, the recently assassinated supreme leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei. This was before his wife and child were killed in the same air strike that killed his father. Imagine how he is now? Do you think he will have an ounce of compassion for anyone who favours a liberal democracy?

Prior to the 2024 attacks, protesters were not being executed simply for peacefully protesting. Yes, there were exceptions were some died in custody due to the brutality of their prison guards. In 2025, Iran’s executions tripled from a few hundred to over a thousand as they started to execute peaceful protesters as well as the ongoing execution of drugs offenders. The deaths in custody also increased.

‘Keep protesting’. It’s a death wish perhaps the torture and brutality is too much for a twenty year old to bear. I wouldn’t blame them. The punch demented are extreme and horror like.

Yes, it is now much more dangerous for any Iranian to protest thanks to the US/Israel attacks from 2024 through 2026.

Perhaps western countries should have used diplomatic means to encourage Iran’s leaders to be more accepting of western values instead of raining down bombs on them, thus giving them actual good cause to hate the US/Israel and the western culture they represent?

That last bit should be punishments. I think it’s decades of oppression and young people wanting more than is being imposed on them.

T’y. I guessed you meant something like that by punch.