India, March 18 (HBTV): Defence Minister Israel Katz says Israel has killed Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib. Tehran has not commented on or confirmed the attack.
If the claim announced on Wednesday is confirmed, it would be the third assassination of high-ranking Iranian leaders in two days.
Iranian security chief Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij paramilitary force, were killed in Israeli air strikes on Tuesday. Iran will hold funerals on Wednesday for both men.
Its foreign minister insisted that Larijani’s killing will not deal a fatal blow to Iran’s leadership.
In an interview with Al Jazeera aired after the killing of Larijani was confirmed by Tehran early on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the United States and Israel had yet to realise that Iran’s government does not rely on a single individual.
Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the occupied West Bank, said Israeli military analysts regarded Khatib as having been a trusted figure close to Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
“According to Israeli sources, they said they have been gathering intelligence that allowed them in the past 24 hours to declare the deaths of three senior Iranian officials,” Ibrahim said.
Katz also announced that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had given the Israeli military standing authorization to eliminate other senior Iranian officials in their sights without case-by-case approval.
“This is seen as another success from the Israeli perspective in targeting the Iranian leadership,” she said.
The reported killing of Khatib followed a difficult 24 hours for Tehran.
On Tuesday, Iran confirmed the deaths of Larijani, the powerful secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, an Soleimani, commander of the Basij, the IRGC’s internal paramilitary force.
Larijani had been one of Iran’s most influential political operators, having previously led its nuclear negotiations with the West and served as speaker of parliament.
The killings are part of a pattern of leadership targeting that Israel has pursued across its network of adversaries.
Numerous Hamas leaders inside and outside of Gaza have been assassinated, following a pattern of years of targeting Palestinian leaders stretching back decades.
Hezbollah’s long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah and a former Houthi prime minister Ahmed Rahawi, have both been killed, and Israeli officials have signalled that such strikes will continue.
Since launching its offensive on February 28, Israel and the United States have systematically removed much of Iran’s top tier of military and political leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the opening day of the war, along with several family members.
(Inputs from Al Jazeera)