Esmail Khatib: Israel claims Iran intelligence minister killed as Tehran stays silent
Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz said Iranian Intelligence Minister esmail khatib was killed, an announcement made Wednesday amid Israeli claims of multiple high-profile assassinations in a short span, while Iranian state media did not immediately confirm the death.
What Israel says happened to Esmail Khatib
Katz said that both security official Ali Larijani and Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani were “eliminated last night, ” and he also announced the killing of esmail khatib on Wednesday. The Israeli military, in separate remarks the same day, said it hit overnight branches of al-Qard al-Hasan that Israel says is being used to fund Hezbollah’s military wing.
A senior Israeli military intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity on the grounds that the assessment was classified, said Iran’s Basij force chief Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani was in a tent hidden in a wooded area under trees. The official said such strikes are intended to send a message that Iranian leaders “have no safe place. ”
Katz also said that “significant surprises are expected throughout this day on all the fronts, ” without elaborating.
What is confirmed — and what is not
Iranian state media did not immediately confirm the reported deaths cited by Katz. Separately, Tehran has not commented on, nor confirmed the attack claim involving Iran’s intelligence minister. The gap between Israel’s public claims and the absence of immediate confirmation from Iranian state media leaves the status of esmail khatib unresolved in official Iranian channels at the time of the statements.
At the same time, the announcements were framed as part of a sequence: the killing of esmail khatib was described as following the killings of top Iranian security official Ali Larijani and the head of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force. In that framing, if the Wednesday claim is confirmed, it would represent another major assassination claim involving Iranian leadership figures over two days.
Why Khatib matters: sanctions record and allegations laid out by the U. S. Treasury
The U. S. Department of the Treasury, which sanctioned Khatib in 2022, described him as directing “several networks of cyber threat actors involved in cyber espionage and ransomware attacks in support of Iran’s political goals. ” The Treasury said the Intelligence Ministry was “engaging in cyber-enabled activities against the United States and its allies. ” It listed his year of birth as either 1960 or 1961 and said he was born in Ghayenat in Iran’s South Khorasan Province.
The Treasury statement also tied Intelligence Ministry cyber actors to activity that “affected Albanian government websites, ” and said those actors were responsible for leaking documents purported to be from the Albanian government, as well as personal information associated with Albanian residents.
In a separate sanctions round referenced in the same record, the Treasury called Iran’s Intelligence Ministry “one of the Iranian government’s main security services which is responsible for serious human rights abuses. ” It said that, “under his leadership, ” the ministry “has cracked down on a large number of human rights defenders, women-rights activists, journalists, filmmakers, and members of religious minority groups, ” and that it had “aggressively persecuted individuals reporting on human rights abuses and violations in Iran, as well as their families. ” The Treasury account also said detainees were subjected to torture in secret detention centers during his tenure.
Katz’s announcement and the sanctions record together underscore why the claim about esmail khatib has immediate regional and international implications—while also highlighting the central unresolved point: Iranian state media did not immediately confirm the deaths as described in Katz’s statement.
