https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/israel-iran-leadership-528c6114
Ali Larijani, Iran’s top security official, strolled confidently in dark sunglasses and a black coat Friday through a rally of regime loyalists in central Tehran. It was his first public appearance in a war in which he was a known target. “Brave people. Brave officials. Brave leaders. This combination cannot be defeated,” he wrote later on X.
Four days later, he was dead. Early Tuesday morning, Israel’s intelligence services found Larijani gathered with other officials at a hideout on the outskirts of Tehran and killed him with a missile strike.
That same night, Israel got a tip from ordinary Iranians that the leader of the feared Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was holing up with his deputies in a tent in a wooded area in Tehran. It was the sort of payoff Israel had been hoping for after blowing up Basij headquarters and command posts for more than two weeks, forcing its members to gather out in the open. Soleimani, too, was struck and killed.
Israeli and American leaders said at the outset that the war with Iran would create the conditions for Iranians to topple their regime. The killings early Tuesday——followed by the Israeli announcement a day later that Iranian Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib had also been killed—were milestones in that campaign made possible by the fast-accumulating damage from airstrikes and a growing harvest of intelligence about possible targets.
With thousands of regime members killed—from top leaders to street-level grunts—Iranians are reporting that a sense of disorder is starting to take hold. Security forces are under stress and on the run as they threaten protesters to stay off the streets and direct strikes at the U.S., Israel and Arab neighbors across the Persian Gulf.
