Iran’s intelligence minister killed in Tehran strike, Israel’s defense minister claims

Iran’s incumbent Minister of Intelligence Esmaeil Khatib (C) sits with Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian (C-R) before a speech to members of parliament in the capital Tehran, on August 17, 2024, as he defends his cabinet selection. [Photo by ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images]

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed Wednesday that Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib, was killed in an overnight airstrike in Tehran.

“The Iranian intelligence minister Khatib was also eliminated overnight,” Katz said in a statement released by his office and cited by The Times of Israel news portal.

Katz said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “authorized the army to eliminate any senior Iranian figure… without the need for additional approval.”

There was no immediate response from Iran on the Israeli claim.

READ: Israeli army claims Iran’s security chief Ali Larijani killed near Tehran

0 Comments

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.