Supreme Leader Says ‘Murderers’ Must Pay for Larijani’s Murder; The United States notes that Tehran does not rebuild its nuclear enrichment
Israeli security forces and rescue workers gather at a train station hit by shrapnel after an Iranian strike in Tel Aviv. Photo: AFP
WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM/TEHRAN:
Israel killed another senior Iranian official, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, and said Wednesday its army was authorized to kill any senior Islamic Republic official it put in its crosshairs. New Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei said in a written message that the assassins of security chief Ali Larijani, who died in an Israeli strike, “will have to pay for this.”
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian called Khatib’s death a “cowardly assassination.”
“Without a doubt, the assassination of such a personality testifies to his importance and the hatred that the enemies of Islam have for him,” said Mojtaba Khamenei, in a message published on her official Telegram channel on the day of Larijani’s funeral in Tehran.
“Every drop of blood shed has a price, and the criminal murderers of these martyrs will soon have to pay,” added Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not yet appeared in public after taking office following the assassination of his father, former supreme leader Ali Khamenei at the start of the war.
The war erupted on Feb. 28 when U.S. and Israeli forces attacked Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and has since been marked by several high-profile killings.
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 Israeli military 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 thwart and hunt them all down.”
Israel has also vowed to hunt down 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 leader of the Basij paramilitary force who was also killed in a strike in Iran this week, according to footage broadcast by Iranian state television.
They took place alongside the funerals of more than 80 Iranian sailors killed when the US torpedoed their frigate off the coast of Sri Lanka earlier this month.
Trucks carrying coffins draped in Iranian flags moved through the procession, while mourners walked alongside, 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 had “effectively been responsible for the survival of the regime, its regional policy and its defense strategy,” David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, told AFP.
US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate hearing that Washington “believes that the Iranian regime is intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities.”
The Guardians, the military’s ideological wing, said it 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 in the face of global arrogance,” they said.
An Iranian missile barrage killed two people near Israel’s Tel Aviv mall, medics said Wednesday, while authorities said falling munitions hit several sites in central Israel overnight.
Police said a cluster bomb hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, a town just outside Tel Aviv, and the roof collapsed on an elderly couple.
Iranian media also claimed that Israel and the United States had launched new strikes in several regions of the country, including Tehran.
The Tasnim news agency reported that “seven people were killed and 56 others injured in a US-Zionist attack on residential areas in the town of Dorud” in Lorestan province.
Tulsi Gabbard
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran is not rebuilding nuclear enrichment capabilities destroyed last year by the United States and Israel, contradicting a key justification by President Donald Trump for his ongoing war.
Tulsi Gabbard, a Trump ally and director of national intelligence, gave mixed signals about the context and results of three weeks of war as she and other officials appeared before Congress.
She also assessed that Iranian leadership remained intact.
“As a result of Operation Midnight Hammer, Iran’s nuclear enrichment program was destroyed,” Gabbard said in prepared testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, referring to the June 2025 U.S. attack.
“There has been no effort since then to attempt to rebuild their enrichment capacity,” Gabbard wrote.
She did not repeat the conclusion in front of the cameras. Pressed by a Democratic senator, Gabbard said she did not have enough time to read the entire testimony during the hearing but did not refute the assessment.
Gabbard herself was an outspoken opponent of war with Iran as a Democratic congresswoman.
One of his top aides, Joseph Kent, resigned Tuesday in protest from his post as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, saying Iran posed no “imminent threat” and that Trump had been misled by Israel and the media.
Democrats attacked Gabbard over the war, saying she failed to prove that Iran poses a threat beyond what it has since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“President Trump said we are not the policemen of the world. He ran on that basis,” said Democratic Senator Michael Bennet.
“Now he has made us the policeman of the world, its jury, its judge, its executioner,” he said.
In her remarks to senators, Gabbard said Iran had suffered blows during weeks of attacks — including the assassination of longtime Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — but that the Islamic republic was still functioning.
The U.S. intelligence community “believes that the Iranian 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 seek to undertake a multi-year effort to rebuild its military, missile and drone forces,” Gabbard said, referring to unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones.
In other findings, Gabbard predicted that Russia would continue its four-year invasion of Ukraine, a war that Trump had vowed to end upon taking office, largely by pushing kyiv to compromise.
U.S. intelligence “believes that Russia has retained the upper hand in the war against Ukraine,” Gabbard said.
“US-led negotiations between Moscow and kyiv are ongoing. Until such an agreement is reached, Moscow will likely continue to fight a slow war,” she said.
Gabbard said the United States would face a threat if there was a “spiral of escalation” in Ukraine or elsewhere that could potentially lead to the use of nuclear weapons.
She said China was “rapidly” modernizing its military with the aim of being able to seize Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing.
However, American intelligence services “believe that China probably prefers to set the conditions for a possible peaceful reunification with Taiwan, without conflict.”
Trump plans to visit China in the coming weeks, a trip he delayed because of the war in the Middle East.
Saudi gas plant
Saudi Arabia said Wednesday it had destroyed a drone heading toward a gas plant, as Iran threatened to attack Gulf energy infrastructure in retaliation for a U.S.-Israeli strike on its own facilities.
“A drone attempting to approach a gas plant 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 following Iranian missile attacks, without specifying when the incident occurred.
Israeli media reported that private planes parked at the airport near Tel Aviv suffered damage. The army on Wednesday lifted the censorship order over the incident but did not allow the date to be released.
Israeli news site Ynet published a photo appearing to show the charred and damaged interior of a small private plane.
This is the first time the military has announced that Ben Gurion, Israel’s main international airport, has been hit since the start of the Middle East war, sparked by the US-Israeli attacks on Iran launched on February 28.
On March 5, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had targeted Ben Gurion Airport and an air base in the region.
Missile or interceptor debris has fallen several times in areas near the airport since the start of the war.
National carrier El Al announced on Wednesday that it was suspending round-trip flights to nearly 30 destinations, including Barcelona, Berlin and Budapest, from March 22 to 28.
This is “in line with the reduced operational framework and current limitations,” he added.
Israel closed its airspace on the first day of the war, with El Al and other Israeli airlines subsequently resuming some of their flights under strict security conditions.
Israel’s Transportation Ministry announced Monday that it wants to increase the number of passengers allowed to travel from Ben Gurion, based on safety guidelines.
