Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani was probably the most highly effective figures within the Islamic Republic, an architect of its safety coverage, and an in depth adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei till the supreme chief’s demise in an airstrike final month.
Larijani, 67, was killed by a U.S.-Israeli air assault as he was visiting his daughter within the japanese outskirts of a Tehran suburb, Iran’s semi-official Fars information company stated on Tuesday (March 17, 2026).
Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz stated earlier on Tuesday that he had been killed in an Israeli strike.
The scion of a number one clerical household with brothers who rose to excessive positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic however at all times fiercely decided to uphold Iran’s theocratic system of presidency.
A Revolutionary Guard Corps commander in the course of the Iran-Iraq conflict within the Nineteen Eighties, he grew to become head of Iran’s nationwide broadcaster earlier than stints operating the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council both facet of his membership of parliament, the place he was speaker for 12 years.
His position as the final word insider in Ali Khamenei’s Iran gave him obligations throughout a large portfolio that included essential nuclear negotiations with the West, managing Tehran’s regional ties and the suppression of inside unrest.
Cautionary method
Regardless of his loyal dedication to Khamenei’s absolute rule, he advocated a extra cautionary method than did different hardline figures, typically keen to additional Iran’s objectives via diplomacy and to satisfy home opposition with soothing phrases.
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However regardless of his relative moderation, he performed an allegedly central position within the bloody crushing of mass protests in January. The violent repression, which killed 1000’s of protesters, led Washington to impose sanctions on him final month.
After the U.S.-Israeli strikes started on February 28, he was one of many first main Iranian figures to talk, accusing Iran’s attackers of looking for to disintegrate and plunder the nation. He additionally issued stern warnings in opposition to any would-be protesters.
The strikes represented the final word failure of a nuclear coverage he had helped design, which tried to construct atomic functionality on the boundary of worldwide guidelines with out frightening an assault.
In pursuing that coverage, he projected the voice of the supreme chief, utilizing his skills as a communicator to construct a rapport with Western negotiators and lay out Khamenei’s imaginative and prescient in frequent tv interviews.
Even had he survived the present conflict, that position might have been curtailed. Within the jostling for management after Khamenei’s demise, it was the Guards who took an ever larger half, leaving fewer selections to political powerbrokers like Larijani.
Rise after the Revolution
Ali Larijani was born in 1958 in Iraq’s nice Shi’ite Muslim shrine metropolis of Najaf, the house of many main Iranian clerics like his father who had fled what they noticed because the oppressive rule of the shah.
He moved to Iran as a toddler, later specializing in his research and incomes a philosophy PhD. However the clerical milieu of his household would have made him keenly conscious of the revolutionary spiritual currents surging via his homeland within the Seventies.
When Larijani was 20 years outdated, the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and put in Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme chief.
When Iraq invaded Iran alongside a 500-mile (800 km) entrance months after the revolution, Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a brand new, ideologically pushed, army unit dedicated to Khomeini.
Because the conflict with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq grew to become the nice crucible testing the mettle of a brand new era of Iranian leaders, Larijani rose as much as turn into a workers officer, a commander centered on the organisational duties behind the entrance that dictated the conflict effort.
His success in that position, alongside his household connections, helped spur his rise within the new Islamic Republic. In addition they ensured his shut ties to the Guards, a army establishment whose significance would proceed rising all through his life.
Numerous positions
After the conflict, Larijani grew to become tradition minister after which head of Iran’s state broadcaster, IRIB, a essential position in a rustic the place ideological messaging has at all times been central to the train of inside energy.
Larijani was appointed to the cupboard by the mercurial president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in workplace from 1989 to 1997. Khamenei, in the meantime, grew to become supreme chief in 1989, upon the demise of Khomeini.
Larijani would have a ringside seat for the years-long energy battle between Rafsanjani and Khamenei — an unrivalled lesson in excessive Iranian politics.
His time at IRIB was adopted by a stint as head of the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council, Iran’s prime international and safety coverage physique. A failed presidential bid adopted, in 2005, earlier than his election to parliament two years later.
Two of his brothers have been having fun with excessive workplace, too – the indicators of a household on the make.
His eldest brother, Mohammad-Javad, was a member of parliament earlier than turning into a senior adviser to Khamenei. A youthful brother, Sadiq, had turn into a cleric and risen to move the judiciary.
Chief nuclear negotiator
As chief nuclear negotiator from 2005 to 2007, Larijani was liable for defending what Tehran says is its proper to complement uranium — a course of required to make gas for a nuclear energy plant however which might additionally yield materials for a warhead.
Stress on Iran over its nuclear programme had ratcheted up after the invention in 2003 that the nation had enrichment services it had not disclosed to worldwide inspectors, prompting fears it was looking for a bomb and resulting in sanctions.
It has at all times denied wanting a bomb.
Larijani likened European incentives to desert nuclear gas manufacturing to “exchanging a pearl for a sweet bar”. Although he was extensively thought to be a pragmatist, he stated that Iran’s nuclear programme “can by no means be destroyed”.
“As a result of after you have found a know-how, they’ll’t take the invention away,” he instructed PBS’s Frontline programme in September 2025. “It’s as in case you are the inventor of some machine, and the machine is stolen from you. You may nonetheless make it once more.”
Larijani made repeated visits to Moscow and met President Vladimir Putin, serving to Khamenei handle a key ally and world energy that acted as a counterweight to stress from the primary and second administrations of U.S. President Donald Trump.
He was additionally tasked with advancing negotiations with China, which led to a 25-year cooperation settlement in 2021.
As parliament speaker from 2008 to 2020 he had a task in guaranteeing {that a} nuclear cope with six world powers in 2015 would meet the necessities of sceptical Iranian hardliners. Trump withdrew the U.S. from the hard-negotiated settlement throughout his first time period, in 2018.
Position in crushing protests
Larijani was once more appointed head of the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council final yr, after a 12-day air conflict launched by Israel.
He was working to avert an assault on Iran till shortly earlier than the conflict started.
“For my part, this concern is resolvable,” Larijani instructed Oman state tv early this yr, referring to the talks with the U.S. “If the Individuals’ concern is that Iran shouldn’t transfer towards buying a nuclear weapon, that may be addressed.”
However Washington additionally denounced him for the council’s position in crushing mass protests in January, even after he and different senior politicians had initially stated that demonstrations over the financial system have been permissible.
Based on a U.S. authorities announcement detailing sanctions in opposition to him and different officers in response to the crackdown, Larijani was on the forefront of the repression.
“Larijani was one of many first Iranian leaders to name for violence in response to the authentic calls for of the Iranian individuals,” a U.S. Treasury assertion stated on January 15, saying he had acted at Khamenei’s behest.
Rights teams say 1000’s of individuals have been killed in a crackdown, the worst home unrest in Iran because the Islamic Revolution.
Considered one of Larijani’s daughters, in the meantime, was dismissed from a medical educating place at Emory College, within the U.S., following protests by Iranian-American activists angered by his position suppressing the demonstrations.