Israel on Friday carried out dozens of strikes in Iran, hitting nuclear and military sites as well as killing several commanders and nuclear scientists. Israel hit a key underground nuclear site in Natanz several times, Iranian state television said, reporting that most damage was at “surface level”.
Additional strikes hit sites in Iran’s northwest, with eight people being killed in and near the city of Tabriz, the ISNA news agency said.
The Revolutionary Guards said that its aerospace commander, Amirali Hajizadeh, was also killed. He was in charge of Iran’s ballistic missile forces.
ISRAEL-IRAN CONFLICT LIVE UPDATES
Iranian media said several nuclear scientists were killed.
Iran responded by launching drones against Israel, and called the Israeli attack “a declaration of war”.
Iran’s most powerful men killed in Israeli strikes
The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, and the chief of staff of its armed forces, Mohammad Bagheri, were killed in Israel’s wave of raids, with replacements swiftly named by supreme leader Ali Khamenei, news agency AFP reported.
Iranian state TV network IRINN on Friday said that senior Khamenei advisor Ali Shamkhani was also killed during Israel’s unprecedented Operation Rising Lion.
Major General Mohammad Bagheri was Iran’s top military official. Bagheri was born Mohammad-Hossein Afshordi in Tehran, but there are conflicting reports about his birth year. Some, including the US Treasury Department, say he was born in 1960 in Tehran, while others list the year as 1958.
Bagheri was a senior Iranian military officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Since 2016, Bagheri served as the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran – the country’s highest military position.
A military intelligence expert, Bagheri joined the IRGC in 1980 and fought in the Iran-Iraq War of 1980s. Bagheri received an engineering degree and later earned a doctoral degree in political geography from Tarbiyat-e Modares University.
Bagheri was promoted to the new chairman of the Armed Forces General Staff (AFGS) from his previous position as deputy chief of staff for intelligence and operations in the General Staff on 28 June 2016, replacing Hassan Firouzabadi, who held the post for twenty-seven years.
One of the most powerful men in Iran, Major General Hossein Salami was the head of the secretive IRGC. According to the CNN report, he oversaw Iran’s most potent military arm, and reported directly to Supreme Leader Khamenei.
According to a US sanction docket, Salami was born in 1960 and headed the IRGC since 2019. “The position saw him helming one of the most powerful tools wielded by the Iranian state, which has been instrumental in crushing dissent at home and projecting Iran’s power abroad,” the report said.
The IRGC reportedly funds and supports Yemen’s Houthis, enabling the terror group to strike international shipping in the Red Sea, and launch missiles and drones at Israel.
Salami was at the helm when launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in April and October last year, in the first direct strikes by Iran on Israeli territory.
It was under Salami’s leadership when the IRGC had shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet shortly after it took off from Tehran’s international airport, killing all 176 people on board. An unnamed IRGC commander was sentenced to 13 years in prison, the report added.
Who was Ali Shamkhani?
A close aide to Khamenei, Ali Shamkhani represented Tehran at talks which sealed a landmark agreement to restore diplomatic ties with foe Saudi Arabia.
He served as Iran’s top national security official for a decade from 2013, before serving in a number of important roles, including in the IRGC, and the ministry of defence, the CNN report said.
He had been a rising star of Iranian diplomacy, well known in foreign-policy circles in Washington and Europe.
Shamkhani represented Iran in China-brokered talks with Saudi officials that led to the two countries agreeing to re-establish diplomatic ties after years of hostility. But he was abruptly replaced in mid-2023, the report added.
(With inputs from agencies)