Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Iran’s top security official Ali Larijani was killed in strikes carried out by Israel on the intervening night of Monday and Tuesday, just hours after Israel’s defence minister Israel made the same announcement.
However, Tehran has not yet confirmed the death of Larijani, who was Iran’s top nuclear negotiator and a close ally of late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Apart from Larijani, Netanyahu also said that Israel killed Gholam Reza Soleimani, another top security official of Iran and the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer paramilitary Basij force.
“This morning we eliminated Ali Larijani. Ali Larijani is the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, which is the gang of gangsters that actually runs Iran. Alongside him, we also eliminated the commander of the Basij—the henchmen of the gangsters, who spread terror in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities against the population. We’re operating there too; operating from the air with Air Force planes, with drones,” Netanyahu said in a post on X accompanied by a video of him.
Giving Iranians ‘opportunity to take their fate in own hands’
Netanyahu claimed that they are “undermining” the current regime in Iran in hope to give Iranians the opportunity to oust it and take their faith “into their own hands”.
“We’re undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people a chance to oust it. It won’t happen all at once, it won’t happen easily. But if we persist in this—we’ll give them the opportunity to take their fate into their own hands,” he wrote.
‘Plenty of surprises’
The Israeli Prime Minister then went on to say that he had a conversation with US President Donald Trump on Monday and that there was “cooperation” between the air forces and navies of both the countries.
“In parallel, we’re helping our American friends in the Gulf,” he said before adding that there are “plenty of surprises”.
“We’ll help both with indirect attacks, which create immense pressure on the Iranian regime, and with direct operations. There are still plenty of surprises. “With stratagems shall we wage war.” We won’t reveal all the stratagems here, but I told you: there are many of them.”
US fighting ‘shoulder to shoulder’
Netanyahu also mentioned the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel which triggered the over two year long war in Gaza and said that at the time, Israel was “on the brink of abyss” but now they are a “mighty power”. He claimed that the United States is fighting with Israel “shoulder to shoulder”.
“I ask you simply to ignore the channels of gloom. We are achieving historic accomplishments. We, with God’s help, have reached a situation after October 7th, when we were on the brink of the abyss, and now we are a mighty power, almost a global one, with the friend who is the global superpower, fighting shoulder to shoulder,” he said.
“That’s already a tremendous achievement in the face of all the threats that will come upon us. What other country has these capabilities? They’re all under attack here. Who has our strengths, the strengths of the alliances, of the IDF, of the Air Force, and of a strong people? So stay strong.”
