Iran confirmed on Tuesday that Israel had overnight assassinated Ali Larijani, one of the most important Iranian officials who had survived the U.S.-Israeli strikes thus far.
Larijani, the secretary of Iran’s National Security Council, was the regime’s key figure after the assassination of supreme leader Ali Khamenei by Israel on February 28. He was Khamenei’s handpicked deputy, and many viewed him as the de facto leader of the Islamic Republic following Khamenei’s death.
Khamenei “saw Larijani as the man who would inherit the Islamic Revolution and continue it,” said Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. “And that obviously has been seriously disrupted.”
An establishment insider who hailed from one of the country’s leading clerical families, Larijani had been tasked with taking the lead on Iran’s most pressing issues. He oversaw Iran’s efforts to reach a nuclear deal with the United States, and is widely believed to have personally directed the deadly crackdown on anti-government protests in January.
Read the full article at the Times of Israel.
