Iran confirms death of security chief Larijani
Iran has confirmed the death of senior official Ali Larijani, calling him a “righteous servant” who achieved “the sweet grace of martyrdom” after being killed in an Israeli strike.
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TEHRAN: Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani was one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic, an architect of its security policy, and a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until the supreme leader's death in an airstrike last month.
Iran's Supreme National Security Council on Tuesday (Mar 17) confirmed the death of its chief Ali Larijani, after Israel said it had killed him in an Israeli strike.
"The pure souls of the martyrs embraced the purified soul of God's righteous servant, Martyr Dr Ali Larijani," the council said, adding that his son and his bodyguards had died with him.
"After a lifetime of struggle for the advancement of Iran and of the Islamic Revolution, he ultimately attained his long-held aspiration, answered the divine call, and honourably achieved the sweet grace of martyrdom in the trench of service," it added.
The scion of a leading clerical family with brothers who rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran's theocratic system of government.
A Revolutionary Guards commander during the Iran-Iraq war, he became head of Iran's national broadcaster before stints running the Supreme National Security Council, either side of his membership of parliament, where he was speaker for 12 years.
His role as the ultimate insider in Khamenei's Iran gave him responsibilities across a wide portfolio that included critical nuclear negotiations with the West, managing Tehran's regional ties and the suppression of internal unrest.
Despite his unswerving commitment to Khamenei's absolute rule, he advocated a more cautionary approach than did other hardline figures, sometimes willing to further Iran's goals through diplomacy and to meet domestic opposition with soothing words.
But despite his relative moderation, he played an allegedly central role in the bloody crushing of mass protests in January. The violent repression, which killed thousands of protesters, led Washington to impose sanctions on him last month.
After the US-Israeli strikes began on Feb 28, he was one of the first major Iranian figures to speak, accusing Iran's attackers of seeking to disintegrate and plunder the country. He also issued stern warnings against any would-be protesters.
The strikes represented the ultimate failure of a nuclear policy he had helped design, which attempted to build atomic capability at the boundary of international rules without provoking an attack.
In pursuing that policy, he projected the voice of the supreme leader, using his abilities as a communicator to build a rapport with Western negotiators and lay out Khamenei's vision in frequent television interviews.
Even if he had survived the current war, that role may have been curtailed. In the jostling for control after Khamenei's death, it was the Guards who took an ever greater part, leaving fewer decisions to political powerbrokers like Larijani.
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