Israel has confirmed the killing of Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister, in an overnight airstrike just days after the assassination of Iran’s security chief, Ali Larijani.
The Israeli Defence Minister, Israel Katz, stated that the strike was carried out on the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with the military instructed to target senior Iranian officials without needing additional approval. Iran has not yet confirmed Khatib’s death.
Khatib was appointed intelligence minister by the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in 2021 and was a close ally of the Iranian leadership. The Israeli military described him as a key architect of the regime’s “repression and terror,” which included the suppression of nationwide protests in 2022–2023.
The United States had previously offered a $10 million reward for information on Khatib, naming him alongside other figures linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Larijani and Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
This strike represents the latest in a series of coordinated US-Israeli operations against Iran’s political elite, with at least 17 senior figures eliminated since the beginning of the conflict. Israel Katz praised the operation as a “critical blow to the Iranian regime’s command-and-control structures,” signalling an ongoing campaign against Tehran’s leadership.
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