The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it had killed one of Iran’s highest-ranking leaders, Ali Larijani, in an airstrike near Tehran. It also said it had killed Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij, Iran’s powerful plainclothes militia.
The deaths would represent the biggest blows to Iran’s leadership since Feb. 28, when an Israeli airstrike killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at the start of the U.S.-Israeli air war. The initial attacks also killed several high-ranking members of Iran’s security leadership.
Mr. Larijani had in effect been running the country behind the scenes since the supreme leader and other senior officials were killed. Even though Mr. Larijani was one of Ayatollah Khamenei’s closest advisers, he was not a likely candidate to succeed him as supreme leader because he was not a senior Shiite cleric. In the end, Mojtaba Khamenei, the slain supreme leader’s reclusive 56-year-old son, was named as his father’s successor.
Samuel Granados is a visual correspondent for The Times based in Spain.
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