Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian on Wednesday confirmed the death of Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, calling the strike a “cowardly assassination,” hours after Israel said its forces had killed
him in an overnight airstrike on Tehran.
In a post on social media platform X, Pezeshkian wrote, “The cowardly assassination of my dear colleagues Esmaeil Khatib, Ali Larijani, and Aziz Nasirzadeh, alongside some of their family members and accompanying team, has left us in deep mourning.”
Earlier, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz stated that Khatib had been eliminated in a strike on Tuesday night. He added that the Israeli military was authorised to target any senior Iranian official deemed a threat.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and I have authorised the IDF to eliminate any senior Iranian official for whom the intelligence and operational circle has been closed, without the need for additional approval,” Katz said. “We will continue to thwart and hunt them all down.”
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Khatib, appointed by then-President Ebrahim Raisi in August 2021, had served as Iran’s top intelligence official until his death. Raisi himself died in a helicopter crash in 2024.
Israel’s announcement comes a day after Iran confirmed the killing of senior security chief Ali Larijani in an Israeli strike, along with Brigadier General Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of Iran’s Basij paramilitary force.
The war has been escalating for over two weeks, following US-Israeli attacks on Iran on February 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and triggered a wider regional conflict.
Both sides have since carried out retaliatory strikes, further intensifying tensions across the Middle East.
(With inputs from agencies)
