In the void left in Iran by the killing of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei after 37 years in power, and in the fog that had thickened around his succession in the first days of the war, Ali Larijani, 67, head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran (SNSC), had made his way, becoming the emergency leader of the Islamic Republic at war. Today Israel claims responsibility for his killing in the raids on Tehran.
Very loyal to Ali Khamenei, he received the task of managing the country on the eve of the expected joint attack by the USA and Israel from the late Supreme Leader – according to the reconstructions of the New York Times.
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In these 18 days of bombing, he has played a much more visible role than the new ‘Rahbar’, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has never appeared in public since he was chosen to succeed his father. The Islamic Republic’s security chief walked through the crowd at a pro-government rally last week through the center of the capital, in a show of defiance against Israel and the United States.
Once counted among the ranks of pragmatists, he has since taken on more intransigent positions. He was the first among the senior Iranian officials to speak publicly after the start of the war and he was always the one to deny the US president, Donald Trump, on the regime’s intentions to negotiate.
A political veteran and multiple presidential candidate, Larijani regained the leadership of the SNSC – which he had already led 20 years ago – after the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June, formally returning to the center of the Iranian security apparatus. He has held high-level positions during a career characterized by loyalty to Khamenei and a reputation for having pragmatic relations with the often rival factions of the System, juggling ideology and diplomacy.
His status as the Supreme Leader’s trusted strategist materialized in February with a trip to Oman, a mediator country with the US, to prepare talks on the nuclear program, while Washington strengthened its military presence in the Middle East to try to extort concessions from Tehran before launching the attack. It was he who, in recent months, went to Moscow to discuss a series of security issues, further demonstrating his return to high-level diplomacy. A few years ago he was also entrusted with the task of carrying forward negotiations with China, which culminated in a 25-year cooperation agreement signed in 2021.
Born in Najaf, the cradle of Iraqi Shiism, in 1958 to a family of Iranian clergy, Larijani moved to Iran as a child and obtained a PhD in philosophy, receiving a secular education. Several of his brothers also held senior positions in the establishment, including the judiciary and the Foreign Ministry. A former member of the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), he was chief negotiator on nuclear power from 2005 to 2007, defending his country’s right to enrich uranium and was president of Parliament when, in 2015, Iran signed the agreement (JCPOA) which was later torn up by Trump in 2018. The US – which sanctioned him – believes he played a leading role in the ferocious repression of the latest anti-government protests in January which, together with other exponents of the regime, he branded as “riots” fomented by Israel.
Despite his intransigent positions, Larijani is considered a supporter of ‘strategic moderation within the System, a conservative capable of combining ideological commitment and pragmatism. His possible elimination, according to some analysts, would weaken the front in the regime most predisposed to a solution to the conflict and shift the decision-making weight towards more extremist actors, close to Mojtaba. If the news is confirmed, Larijani would have been killed on the ‘Night of Destiny’ (in Arabic Laylat al-Qadr), one of the holiest nights in Islam in which the Koran was revealed to Muhammad.
Commander Basij Soleimani killed
The Israeli army announced that it had killed the commander of the paramilitary Basij force, Gholamreza Soleimani. “His elimination adds to the dozens of senior commanders of the Iranian terrorist regime’s armed forces killed during the operation and deals another serious blow to the regime’s security command and control structures,” it said in a statement.
“The Basij forces are part of the armed apparatus of the Iranian terrorist regime,” it said in a statement.
“During the internal protests in Iran, particularly in recent times with the intensification of demonstrations, the Basij forces under the command of Soleimani have led the main repression operations, resorting to severe violence, mass arrests and the use of force against civilian protesters,” it explains.