PARIS/WASHINGTON/TEHRAN: Iran confirmed late on Tuesday that its security chief Ali Larijani has been martyred in an Israeli strike hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz said Larijani has been “eliminated”.
Earlier in the day crowds gathered in Iranian cities after authorities called for nationwide rallies to defy enemy “plots”.
While a senior US counterterrorism official resigned to protest the US-Israeli war against Iran and said the Islamic Republic posed no imminent threat to the United States.
The Iran rallies came on a night usually marked by Persian new year (Nowruz) festivities. Large crowds rallied from the early evening in the capital Tehran and other cities, many waving the Iranian flag, images on state TV showed.
It had earlier broadcast a message from authorities urging people to join religious groups across the country for a “popular gathering to neutralise the potential plots of elements of the Zionist enemy”, referring to Israel.
Reza Pahlavi, the eldest son of Iran’s last shah ousted by the revolution that brought the Islamic republic to power, called for peaceful Chaharshanbe Suri celebrations and for people to “avoid any tension, confrontation, or even approaching” security forces in the streets. Reza Pahlavi announced a new committee on Monday to lay the groundwork for a future truth commission in Iran and named a Nobel Peace Prize winner to lead it.
Iran’s judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei warned that if anyone disrupted public security over the upcoming Nowruz holidays, “they will face strict legal action and there will be no tolerance or forgiveness for these elements.” State TV reported six people were arrested over accusations of being “ringleaders of the monarchist terrorist network” planning unrest on Tuesday. It did not give further details.
While US President Donald Trump lashed out at “foolish” Nato over Iran, saying the United States needs no help after allies rebuffed his calls to join efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump said most US allies had rejected his push to escort ships through the crucial waterway, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying his country would “never” do so until the situation was calmer. “I think Nato is making a very foolish mistake,” Trump told reporters as he hosted Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin in the Oval Office. “I’ve long said that I wonder whether or not Nato would ever be there for us. So this was a great test.”
But Trump insisted that Washington was ready to go it alone against Iran, saying that even Nato allies had agreed that the Islamic republic needed to be confronted over its nuclear program. “We don’t need too much help. We don’t need any help,” Trump said.
Asked if he would reconsider the US relationship with NATO as he has suggested in the past, Trump said it was “certainly something that we should think about” but added: “I have nothing currently in mind.”
But he repeated his criticisms of foreign counterparts over the issue, saying British Prime Minister Keir Starmer “hasn’t been supportive, and I think it’s a big mistake.” Of Macron, he merely said that “he’ll be out of office soon.”
The US leader had suggested on Monday that both Paris and London would be ready to help, and said other countries he did not name were already on board.
But Macron insisted that France would not participate in operations to open the strait in the current context, but once the situation becomes “calmer” it could participate in an “escort system” alongside other nations. Britain has also waved off Washington’s request for assistance.
Trump meanwhile kept up his mixed messaging about the length and goals of the US-Israeli war on Iran, which has expanded dramatically across the Middle East and caused global oil prices to surge.
He said that Iran’s “actual top leader was killed yesterday,” in an apparent reference to Israel’s claim that it had killed powerful national security chief Ali Larijani. Iran was “just a military operation to me” and “we’ll be leaving in pretty much the very near future,” Trump said, but he remained vague about his political plan for the country after the war. “We’re going to try to get people that are going to run it well,” he said.
While a senior US counterterrorism official resigned on Tuesday to protest the US-Israeli war against Iran and said the Islamic Republic posed no imminent threat to the United States. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Joseph Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), said in his resignation letter to President Donald Trump.
Kent—a former member of the Green Beret special forces who served multiple combat tours—said “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.” Kent, 45, who was appointed to head the NCTC by Trump, is the first senior US official to resign from his administration to protest the war against Iran. Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, accused Kent of being “very weak on security” and said it’s a “good thing that he’s out.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt pushed back against what she called “false claims” in Kent’s resignation letter, calling “insulting and laughable” the suggestion that the decision to go to war was made “based on the influence of others.”
“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” Leavitt said.
Kent’s wife, Shannon, also served in the US military and was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019. “As a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives,” Kent wrote.
Oil prices rose again Tuesday as Iran launched fresh attacks on crude-producing neighbours, while stock markets were higher ahead of key central bank meetings.
Prices rebounded from the previous day’s decline, which came after the head of the International Energy Agency said stockpiles could be tapped again if needed. A new drone strike on Tuesday hit the Fujairah oil complex, which sits on the Gulf of Oman and enables the UAE to bypass the Strait of Hormuz for some exports. Two drones targeted a major southern Iraqi oil field, an oil ministry spokesperson told AFP, after the second attack in four days.
Meanwhile, Iran is selecting ships from friendly countries to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial trade waterway cut off by the Middle East war, data trackers indicated Tuesday.
But at least five ships exited the Strait via Iranian waters on March 15 and 16, maritime intelligence firm Windward said in an analysis report on Tuesday.
”The new route illustrates how Iran’s selective blockade has evolved to allow allies and supporters to transit”, it said, citing its tracking as “rising evidence that Iran is exerting permission-based transit and control of the strait”.
Natasha Kaneva, a commodities analyst at JPMorgan bank, said in an analysis on Monday that at least four ships had been tracked exiting the strait via the Larak-Qeshm Channel, near the Iranian coast, over the previous two days.
”This is not a standard route for vessels and could reflect a process designed to confirm vessel ownership and cargo, enabling passage for ships that are not affiliated to the US or its allies,” she said in a note sent to AFP.
The vessels included bulk carriers and one oil tanker, the Pakistani-flagged Karachi.
Tracking site MarineTraffic said the Karachi transited the strait with its automatic transponder system activated—where most vessels keep it turned off to avoid being targeted. Kaneva said most of the crude passing through the strait was headed for Asia, principally China.
Several countries have opened talks with Tehran to secure passage for their vessels, while the United States has pushed allies to provide military protection for shipping in the region.
Two Indian-flagged tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas reached Indian ports after crossing the strait over the weekend after officials from the countries said they held talks.
A Turkish-owned ship was also able to cross the strait with Iran’s permission, Turkey’s transport minister Abdulkadir Uraloglu said.
Iran’s parliament speaker warned that maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would not resume on the same terms even after the current conflict is over. “The Strait of Hormuz situation won’t return to its pre-war status,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said, in an English-language social media post.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday that 201 Ukrainian anti-drone military experts were in the Middle East to help defend the region against Iranian-designed Shahed drones, and another 34 were “ready to deploy”.
Several loud explosions were heard Tuesday evening in Iraq’s capital Baghdad, AFP journalists reported, with a security official reporting a drone and rocket attack on the US embassy.
In a restaurant in the city, where diners did not react to the initial sounds of the blasts, a witness told AFP he saw detonations caused by the embassy’s air defences intercepting projectiles.
Another witness saw a fire on the edge of the embassy grounds from her balcony, with the blaze also reported by the security official, who said it was caused by a drone.
“The embassy was the target of a drone and rocket attack,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. On Monday evening into early Tuesday morning, attacks targeted the US diplomatic mission, while a drone crashed into a luxury hotel popular with foreign diplomats. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Tuesday confirmed the death of the commander of the affiliated Basij paramilitary force in an US-Israeli strike. “Commander Gholamreza Soleimani, head of the Basij Organization, has been martyred,” the Guards said on their Sepah News website, after Israel said it had killed him in an air strike.
Powerful Iran-backed armed group Kataeb Hezbollah in Iraq demanded late Tuesday that every “foreign soldier” leave the country, its security chief said.
Israel claimed on Tuesday it had killed Iran’s powerful national security chief, Ali Larijani, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling him the leader of “the gang of gangsters” that runs the Islamic republic.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Larijani was “eliminated last night”, although this has not been confirmed by Iran. “This morning we eliminated Ali Larijani, the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, which is the gang of gangsters that actually runs Iran,” Netanyahu said in a televised statement.
He said the overthrow of Iran’s authorities by the people “will not happen all at once, it will not happen easily. But if we persist in this—we will give them a chance to take their fate into their own hands.”
The Israeli military said that it would hunt down Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei. “We don’t know about Mojtaba Khamenei, we don’t hear him, we don’t see him, but I can tell you one thing: we will track him down, find him, and neutralise him,” military spokesman Brigadier General Effie Defrin told reporters.
Turkiye’s top diplomat on Tuesday lashed out at Israel after it claimed to have killed Iran’s powerful national security chief Ali Larijani, denouncing its targeting of Tehran’s leaders as “illegal”. “Israel’s political assassinations, especially those targeting Iranian statesmen and politicians, are truly illegal activities outside the normal laws of war,” Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told a news conference. Larijani’s death has not been confirmed by Iran.
A British warship stopped in Gibraltar on Tuesday as it heads to the eastern Mediterranean amid the US-Israeli war with Iran. HMS Dragon stopped in the British territory to take on supplies and conduct a personnel changeover, Britain’s defence ministry said in a statement.
The warship, capable of shooting down drones and ballistic missiles, left its base in Portsmouth in southern England on March 10. Britain deployed the vessel following criticism from opposition politicians and the Cypriot government over a perceived slow response to a drone attack on Britain’s Akrotiri base in southern Cyprus.
While British Airways said it has cancelled flights to and from several destinations in the Middle East until June as war in the region disrupts the global aviation industry.
China said it will provide humanitarian assistance to Middle Eastern countries, including Iran and Lebanon, targeted in US and Israeli strikes in the conflict now in its third week. China’s foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said the war had caused “grave humanitarian catastrophes” in Iran and other Middle Eastern nations. “China will continue to make every effort to promote peace and stop the war... and to prevent further spreading of the humanitarian crisis,” he added.
Albania designated Iran’s Revolutionary Guards a “terrorist organisation” and Iran as a state “supporting terrorism” as the Middle East war raged on.
While Iraq was in contact with Iran to try to arrange passage for some of its oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the country’s oil minister told local media. The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Russia has been expanding its intelligence sharing and military cooperation with Iran, providing satellite imagery and improved drone technology to aid Tehran’s targeting of US forces in the region. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.
The US aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford, deployed in operations against Iran, is expected to temporarily pull into port after a fire on board, US officials said on Tuesday, the 18th day of the war with Tehran.
The carrier, America’s newest and the world’s largest, is currently located in the Red Sea. It is expected to temporarily go to Souda Bay on the Greek island of Crete, the two officials said.
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not say how long the Ford was expected to remain in Crete. One of the officials said nearly 200 sailors were treated for smoke-related injuries when the fire broke out in the ship’s main laundry area. The fire took hours to bring under control and had an impact on roughly 100 sleeping berths. One service member was flown off the ship for injuries, the official said. The New York Times first reported the extent of the damage on board the warship. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a sign of Iran’s continued defiance after more than two weeks of war, a senior Iranian official who asked not to be identified said the younger Khamenei had rejected proposals that were conveyed to Iran’s Foreign Ministry for “reducing tensions or ceasefire with the United States”. The official did not give further details, Reuters reported.
The official said Mojtaba Khamenei had held his first foreign policy session since being named supreme leader, and had declared that it was not “the right time for peace until the United States and Israel are brought to their knees, accept defeat, and pay compensation”.
He did not clarify whether the younger Khamenei, who has not yet appeared in photos or on TV since being named last week to replace his slain father, had attended the meeting in person or remotely.
