Supreme Leader Says ‘Murderers’ Must Pay for Killing Larijani; The United States considers that Tehran is not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment program
Israeli security forces and rescuers gather at a train station that was hit by shrapnel following an Iranian attack in Tel Aviv. Photo: AFP
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM/TEHRAN:
Israel killed another top Iranian official, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, and declared Wednesday that its military is authorized to kill any senior figure in the Islamic republic it targets, while new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written message that the killers of security chief Ali Larijani, who was killed in an Israeli strike, “will have to pay for it.”
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian called Khatib’s death a “cowardly murder.”
“Without a doubt, the murder of such a figure demonstrates his importance and the hatred that the enemies of Islam harbor towards him,” said Mojtaba Khamenei, in a message published on his official Telegram channel on the day of Larijani’s funeral in Tehran.
“Every drop of blood spilled has a price, and the criminal murderers of these martyrs will soon have to pay for it,” added Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear in public after taking office following the assassination of his father, former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, at the start of the war.
The war broke out on February 28 when US and Israeli forces attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has since been marked by several high-profile assassinations.
News of Khatib’s death came a day after Iranian security chief Ali Larijani was confirmed dead in an Israeli strike.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorized the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the operational and intelligence circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” announced Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz.
“We will continue to frustrate and pursue them all.”
Israel has also vowed to go after Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since succeeding his father.
Large crowds gathered in central Tehran for the funerals of Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani, the head of the Basij paramilitary force who was also killed in an attack in Iran this week, according to images broadcast on Iranian state television.
They were held alongside the funerals of more than 80 Iranian sailors who were killed in a US torpedo attack on their frigate off Sri Lanka earlier this month.
Trucks carrying coffins draped in Iranian flags moved along the procession, as mourners walked alongside them carrying portraits of the slain supreme leader and beating their chests, a sign of mourning in Shiite culture.
Unlike Mojtaba Khamenei, Larijani, 68, had walked openly with the crowd at a pro-government rally last week in Tehran.
“He has effectively been the figure responsible for the survival of the regime, its regional policy and its defense strategy,” David Khalfa, co-founder of the Middle East Atlantic Forum, told AFP.
US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate hearing that Washington “views Iran’s regime as intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities.”
The Guards, the army’s ideological arm, said they had launched missiles into central Israel in retaliation for Larijani’s death and warned of more to come.
The “pure blood of this great martyr… will be a source of honor, power and national awakening against the front of global arrogance,” they said.
An Iranian missile barrage killed two people near the Tel Aviv shopping center in Israel, medics said Wednesday, while authorities said munitions landed at multiple sites in central Israel overnight.
Police said a cluster bomb hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, a city outside Tel Aviv, and the roof collapsed on an elderly couple.
Meanwhile, Iranian media said Israel and the United States had launched new attacks in several areas of the country, including Tehran.
The Tasnim news agency said that “seven people were killed and 56 wounded in a US Zionist attack on residential areas in the city of Dorud” in Lorestan province.
Tulsi Gabbard
U.S. intelligence concluded that Iran was not rebuilding nuclear enrichment capabilities destroyed last year by the United States and Israel, contradicting a key President Donald Trump justification for its ongoing war.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump ally and director of national intelligence, offered mixed signals about the backdrop and outcomes of three weeks of war as she and other officials appeared before Congress.
He also assessed that Iran’s leadership remains intact.
“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was destroyed,” Gabbard said in testimony prepared for the Senate intelligence committee, referring to the June 2025 US attack.
“Since then there have been no efforts to attempt to rebuild its enrichment capacity,” Gabbard wrote.
He did not repeat the conclusion before the cameras. Pressed by a Democratic senator, Gabbard said she did not have enough time to read the full testimony at the hearing, but did not refute the assessment.
Gabbard herself had openly opposed war with Iran when she was a Democratic congresswoman.
One of his top advisers, Joseph Kent, resigned in protest Tuesday as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying Iran did not pose an “imminent threat” and that Trump was misled by Israel and the media.
Democrats attacked Gabbard over the war, saying she had not shown that Iran posed any threat beyond what it has posed since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
“President Trump said we’re not the world’s police officers. He ran on that,” said Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet.
“Now he has turned us into the world’s policeman, his jury, his judge, his executioner,” he said.
In her remarks to senators, Gabbard said Iran had been suffering heavy blows during the weeks of attacks, which included the assassination of longtime supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but that the Islamic republic was still functioning.
The U.S. intelligence community “assesses that Iran’s regime is intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities,” Gabbard said.
“If a hostile regime survives, it will likely attempt to launch a years-long effort to rebuild its military, missile and unmanned aerial vehicle forces,” Gabbard said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
In other findings, Gabbard predicted that Russia would continue to press its four-year invasion of Ukraine, a war that Trump had promised to end upon taking office, largely by pressuring kyiv to commit.
U.S. intelligence “assesses that Russia has maintained the advantage in the war against Ukraine,” Gabbard said.
“US-led negotiations between Moscow and kyiv are ongoing. Until such an agreement is reached, Moscow is likely to continue fighting a slow war,” he said.
Gabbard said the United States faced a threat if there was an “escalation spiral” in Ukraine or elsewhere, which could potentially lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
He said China was “rapidly” modernizing its military with the goal of being able to seize Taiwan, the autonomous democracy claimed by Beijing.
However, US intelligence “assesses that China would likely prefer to set the conditions for eventual peaceful reunification with Taiwan without conflict.”
Trump plans to travel to China in the coming weeks, a trip he delayed due to the war in the Middle East.
saudi gas plant
Saudi Arabia said it destroyed a drone heading toward a gas plant on Wednesday, as Iran threatened to attack Gulf energy infrastructure in retaliation for an attack by the United States and Israel on its own facilities.
“A drone attempting to approach a gas factory in the Eastern Province was intercepted and destroyed; the interception and destruction operation caused no damage,” the Saudi Defense Ministry said.
Ben Gurion Airport
The Israeli army told AFP on Wednesday that “debris” had hit Ben Gurion International Airport after the launch of Iranian missiles, without specifying when the incident occurred.
Israeli media reported that private planes parked at the airport near Tel Aviv had been damaged. The army on Wednesday lifted the censure order relating to the incident, but did not authorize the release of the date.
Israeli news site Ynet published a photograph that appears to show the charred and damaged interior of a small private plane.
It is the first time that the military has announced that Ben Gurion, Israel’s main international airport, has been attacked since the start of the war in the Middle East, sparked by the US and Israeli attacks against Iran launched on February 28.
On March 5, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said it had attacked Ben Gurion Airport and an air force base in the area.
Remains of missiles or interceptors have fallen in areas near the airport several times since the beginning of the war.
Flag carrier El Al said on Wednesday it would suspend round-trip flights to nearly 30 destinations, including Barcelona, Berlin and Budapest, from March 22 to 28.
He said this was “in line with the reduced operational framework and current limitations”.
Israel had closed its airspace on the first day of the war, and El Al and other Israeli airlines subsequently resumed some of their flights under strict security conditions.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry announced Monday that it wanted to increase the number of passengers allowed to travel from Ben Gurion, depending on safety guidelines.
