Iran has confirmed the death of Ali Larijani, the head of the Islamic Republic’s national security. Larijani was a key figure in his war leadership.
Confirmation of his death from Iran came hours after Israel earlier said it had killed him in a nighttime airstrike. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, which Larijani headed, acknowledged his death in a statement, according to Bloomberg, citing the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The statement said he was killed alongside his son Morteza.
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Larijani, 67, was killed while visiting his daughter on the eastern edge of the Pardis neighborhood on the outskirts of Tehran, Reuters reported, citing the Fars news agency.
On Tuesday, Israel, which has designated Larijani as Iran’s de facto leader, said it had “eliminated” him in an overnight airstrike that also killed the country’s commander of the Basij paramilitary force. The death of the Basij commander had already been confirmed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Who was Ali Larijani?
Larijani was a descendant of a leading priestly family in Iran with brothers who rose to high positions after 1979 Islamic Revolution. He was considered shrewd and pragmatic, but was always fiercely committed to supporting Iran’s theocratic system of government, Reuters reported.
Larijani, commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, became head of Iran’s national broadcaster and then served as head of the Supreme National Security Council on both sides of his membership in parliament, where he served as speaker for 12 years.
Larijani also held the posts of Deputy Minister of Labor and Information in the first post-revolutionary years.
He was Minister of Culture and Islamic Leadership under President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from 1992 to 1994 and pushed for strict cultural and media controls.
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Larijani headed the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), a state media monopoly, from 1994 to 2004. And in 2005, under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Larijani became the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, resigning in 2007 amid political infighting.
Larijani served as Speaker of the Iranian Parliament (Majlis) for 12 years from 2008 to 2020.
Cchief nuclear negotiator
As chief nuclear negotiator from 2005 to 2007, Larijani was responsible for defending what Tehran says is its right to enrich uranium – a process required to produce fuel for a nuclear power plant but which can also provide material for a warhead.
Pressure on Iran over its nuclear program surged after the country was found in 2003 to have a uranium enrichment facility it had not disclosed to international inspectors, raising fears it was seeking a bomb and leading to sanctions.
Iran has always denied it wants a bomb.
In a 2015 interview with CNN, Larijani praised the deal negotiated by the Barack Obama administration that curbed Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, describing it as “the beginning of a better understanding of other issues.”
Larijani was disqualified from running in the 2021 and 2024 Iranian presidential elections. However, President Masoud Pezeshkian reappointed him as Secretary of the SNSC in August 2025.
After last year’s conflict with Israel, Larijani returned to prominence as head of the National Security Council and was considered by many analysts to be the country’s most important decision-maker.
Family Details – The Kennedys of Iran
But Ardashir Larijani was born on June 3, 1958 in Najaf, Iraq to a wealthy family from the Iranian city of Amol. He came from a dynasty so influential that in 2009 Time magazine described them as “the Kennedys of Iran,” Al Jazeera reported.
Larijani’s father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a prominent religious scholar. His brothers held some of the most powerful positions in Iran, including the judiciary and the Assembly of Experts, a scholarly council empowered to elect and oversee the Supreme Leader.
At the age of 20, Larijani married Farideh Motahari, daughter of Morteza Motahhari, a close confidant of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ruhollah Khomeini.
Larijani’s daughter Fatemeh, a medical graduate from Tehran University, completed her residency at Cleveland State University in Ohio, USA.
Ali Larijani has four brothers who hold high positions in Iran’s judicial, legislative and security institutions.
Islamic education and Western philosophy
Larijani studied at a religious seminary in Qom and received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and computer science from Sharif University of Technology in Tehran in 1979. He later completed his MA and PhD in Western Philosophy at the University of Tehran and wrote his thesis on Immanuel Kant.
According to Larijani’s profile on the University of Tehran website, he has published three books on Immanuel Kant (all in Persian) — Mathematical Method in Kant’s Philosophy, Metaphysics and Exact Sciences in Kant’s Philosophy, and Intuition and Synthetic A priori Judgments in Kant’s Philosophy.
Larijani has also written about Saul Kripke—an American philosopher of language and modal logic—and David Lewis, an analytic metaphysician.
What does his death mean?
In the latest escalation, Larijani, who accused US President Donald Trump of falling into an “Israeli trap”, was at the center of Iran’s ruling system’s response to its biggest crisis since 1979.
After Khamenei’s assassination, he played an important role alongside the three-member Transitional Council that governed Iran. The 67-year-old man had decades of experience in the military, legislative and cultural spheres.
“He had his fingers in a lot of different pots,” Barbara Slavin, an American journalist and fellow at the Stimson Center who interviewed Larijani four times, told Middle East Eye.
In the months leading up to the war, Larijani became even more important, at times effectively directing the country’s day-to-day strategy as pressure mounted, according to CBS News. As the war unfolded after the February 28 joint US-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Larijani emerged as the defiant face and voice of the Islamic Republic.
The Security Council, which he heads, is one of the most important institutions of the state, especially in times of war. As Secretary of the Security Council, Larijani was the equivalent of India’s National Security Adviser.
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The high-profile killing is likely to heighten questions about Iran’s remaining leadership and the prospects for any kind of negotiated deal to end the war.
He had his fingers in a lot of different pots.
The killings are the latest escalation in the conflict, which has seen Iranian retaliatory attacks on countries in the oil-rich Persian Gulf and sent shockwaves through the global economy.
As someone who was seen as a moderate conservative, Larijani’s absence now leaves powerful hardliners such as Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf and the remaining Islamic Revolutionary Guards officers in charge of the Islamic Republic.
Larijani’s death also left a vacuum at the top of Iran’s most important national security organization, dealing a major blow to the leadership structure that runs the country and executes its war plans.
Key things
- Larijani’s death marks a significant shift in Iran’s national security leadership.
- A leadership vacuum may lead to an increase in the influence of hardliners in the Iranian government.
- This high-level killing could affect the dynamics of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.
