Israel says Iran intel chief killed, tells military to hunt down officials

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Jerusalem - Israel said on March 18 that its forces had killed another top Iranian official, Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, and that its military was authorised to kill any senior figure of the Islamic republic in its sights.

The killing of Mr Khatib comes soon after Israel killed Iran’s powerful security chief Ali Larijani, and another senior figure, Basij paramilitary force commander Gholamreza Soleimani. It is part of a longstanding strategy by Israel to target its enemy’s leaders.

The US State Department offered a US$10 million (S$12.8 million) reward last week for information about Iran’s new supreme leader and other top officials, including Mr Khatib.

“The intensity of the strikes in Iran is moving up a notch. We are in the midst of a decisive stretch,” Defence Minister Israel Katz said.

He added that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been authorised to target any senior Iranian official without requiring further approval.

“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,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to thwart and hunt them all down.”

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian confirmed on March 18 that Mr Khatib had been killed in a “cowardly assassination”, without saying who had carried out the attack.

The two sides have been at war for more than two weeks since the US-Israeli attack on Iran on Feb 28 killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and ignited a regional conflict.

Israel said this week it had also targeted Mr Akram al-Ajouri, head of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, in a strike in Iran.

And it has vowed to hunt down Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since he succeeded his father.

Mr David Khalfa, co-founder of the Atlantic Middle East Forum, described Israel’s strategy as “a campaign of counter-regime warfare”.

It was “aimed at dismantling the regime’s politico-security architecture to make it waver on its foundations”, he wrote on X.

In a statement announcing Mr Khatib’s killing, the Israeli military said the Iranian leader had “played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, both with regard to the arrest and killing of protesters as well as shaping the regime’s intelligence assessment”.

“In addition to his activities targeting the State of Israel, Khatib led the Ministry of Intelligence’s terrorist activities against Israeli and American targets around the world,” it added, including during the current war between the arch foes.

Political assassinations

Large crowds gathered in central Tehran on March 18 for the funerals of Mr Larijani and Mr Soleimani, according to images broadcast by Iranian state television. They were held alongside the funerals of more than 80 Iranian sailors killed in a US torpedoing of their frigate off Sri Lanka earlier in March.

Lorries carrying coffins draped in Iranian flags moved through the procession, as mourners walked alongside them, carrying portraits of the slain supreme leader and beating their chests – a traditional sign of mourning in Shia culture.

In contrast to Mr Mojtaba Khamenei, Mr Larijani, 68, had walked openly with crowds at a pro-government rally last week in Tehran.

He had “effectively been the figure in charge of the regime’s survival, its regional policy and its defence strategy”, Mr Khalfa told AFP.

Israel has pursued what analysts have described as a policy of decapitation against Iran and the militant movements it backs in the region, killing Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in 2024 and several top Hamas figures since the Oct 7, 2023, attacks that sparked the Gaza war.

Despite Iran losing its leader of nearly four decades as well as Mr Larijani, a key pillar of the Islamic republic, the powerful Revolutionary Guards and the leadership as a whole have remained defiant.

The Guards, the ideological arm of the military, said they had launched missiles at central Israel in retaliation for Mr Larijani’s death and warned of more to come.

The “pure blood of this great martyr... will be a source of honour, power and national awakening against the front of global arrogance”, they said.

Deadly strikes

An Iranian missile barrage killed two people near Israel’s commercial hub of Tel Aviv, medics said on March 18, while the authorities said falling munitions hit multiple sites in central Israel overnight.

Police said a cluster bomb hit a residential building in Ramat Gan, a city just outside Tel Aviv, and the roof collapsed on an elderly couple.

Mr Omer, a resident of the area who gave only his first name, said “we heard like a streak of booms... it was not just one, it was a splitting missile”.

Iranian media meanwhile said Israel and the US had launched fresh strikes across several areas of the country, including Tehran.

The Tasnim news agency said “seven people were killed and 56 were injured in an American-Zionist attack on residential areas in Dorud town” in Lorestan province.

AFP could not independently verify the figures.

The war has engulfed the region, from Gulf nations to Iraq to nearby Lebanon.

In Lebanon, which was drawn into the conflict after Iran-backed group Hezbollah launched rockets towards Israel over Mr Ali Khamenei’s death, Israel repeatedly struck central Beirut on March 18.

The Lebanese authorities reported at least 12 dead, while AFP journalists said three densely populated neighbourhoods in the heart of Beirut were hit.

US pounds Strait of Hormuz

In addition to its attacks on Israel and its neighbours, Iran has been hitting the global economy through attacks on energy infrastructure in the oil-rich Gulf.

Its attacks and threats against ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz have all but closed the key waterway, through which a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows.

With oil still hovering around US$100 a barrel, the US military dropped several 2,200kg bombs on “hardened Iranian missile sites” near the coast that posed a threat to international shipping, Central Command said.

US President Donald Trump on March 17 fumed that American allies, which have largely distanced themselves from his war, were not lining up behind the US to escort tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. His latest statement on March 18 suggested the US could abandon the situation altogether, leaving other countries to deal with the aftermath.

“I wonder what would happen if we ‘finished off’ what’s left of the Iranian Terror State, and let the Countries that use it, we don’t, be responsible for the so called ‘Strait’? That would get some of our non-responsive ‘Allies’ in gear, and fast!!! President DJT,” he wrote on Truth Social. AFP