Dozens of senior Iranian officials and military commanders were eliminated during Operation Epic Fury, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the second Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“The scale of these targeted killings is striking. Together they represent a substantial portion of the upper tiers of Iran’s military and security leadership,” opposition website Iran International noted, adding that leadership of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was hit especially hard.
Many of the leaders on Iran International’s list were killed in the very first moments of Operation Epic Fury on February 28 by Israeli strikes that targeted a meeting between Khamenei and many of his top defense officials.
Khamenei is believed to have died alongside Ali Shamkani, one of his top military advisers, secretary of Iran’s Defense Council, and a leading nuclear negotiator; Abdolrahim Mousavi, armed forces chief of staff and a key figure in Iran’s ballistic missile and drone programs; Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh; IRGC Commander-in-Chief Mohammed Pakpour; senior military intelligence officer Salah Asadi; and Mohammad Shirazi, chief of Khamenei’s military bureau.
A question mark that still hangs over the initial strike is the fate of Khamenei’s son and nominal successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. He was installed as the new Supreme Leader by the IRGC on March 9, even though rumors claimed he may have been seriously injured in the strike that killed his father. He has issued several statements through third parties, but has not been seen or heard from in public since the war began.
Another high-ranking casualty of the war was Ali Larijani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. Larijani was thought to have taken over executive functions after Ali Khamenei was killed, but the regime confirmed that Larijani himself was killed by an Israeli strike on March 17.
Many of the senior Iranian officials killed during the war were tied to Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, including Brig. Gens. Hossein Jabal Amelian and Reza Mozaffari Nia, who headed up the Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research (SPND), the research and development wing of the Iranian armed forces.
The head of the Iranian navy, Commodore Alireza Tangsiri, was killed on March 26. “Not only do they not have a navy, Mr. President, they no longer have a navy commander,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth reported to President Trump.
Iran also lost some of its senior intelligence officials, including Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khabit, who was eliminated by a targeted Israeli airstrike on March 18. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian denounced the strike as a “cowardly assassination” that left Iran in “deep mourning.”
The few Iranian citizens who could get through to foreign media said it was a relief to see key members of the regime’s repression apparatus neutralized, including Khabit and Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the thuggish paramilitary Basij force, who died the day before the intelligence chief.
Soleimani was killed while meeting with several other Basij officials, including the head of intelligence for the organization, Brig. Ben. Esmail Ahmadi. Another Basij leader eliminated in March was Ebrahim Mortazavi-Nasb, frontline commander of the Basij units assigned to massacre Iranian civilians in the city of Shiraz.
“The scale of these targeted killings is striking. Together they represent a substantial portion of the upper tiers of Iran’s military and security leadership. Even though they all have replacements, these were the main figures,” an unnamed woman in Tehran told the BBC when Khabit’s death was announced.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that eliminating so many of the worst leaders of the Iranian regime was an achievement to be proud of.
He said:
We targeted nuclear scientists, eliminated leaders of the Islamic Republic, destroyed nuclear facilities, and wiped out missiles along with the vast majority of missile production factories. We hit countless military industries and infrastructures. We destroyed their navy and air force. We eliminated the Basij commanders who massacred the Iranian people.
The total number of high-ranking Iranian officials killed during the war is somewhere around 50, though the exact number is difficult to pin down, as some suspected deaths have not been confirmed, and the cutoff rank for “senior officials” is subjective.