Tehran announced the deaths of three senior officers on Sunday.
The intelligence chief of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been killed in an Israeli strike.
Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, head of the IRGC’s Intelligence Organization, was “assassinated” along with two other intelligence officers, Hassan Mohaghdeh and Mohsen Bagheri, the Guards confirmed in a statement on Sunday evening.
The IRGC said it responded by launching missiles at Israeli “intelligence centers” as part of the third wave of its ongoing barrage, dubbed Operation True Promise III.
The killing of Kazemi was first announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview with Fox News on Sunday. “I think we’ve set them back quite a bit,” Netanyahu told journalist Bret Baier.
Open hostilities erupted on Friday morning when Israeli jets bombed military and nuclear sites across Iran in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described as an operation to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran responded with a barrage of missiles, some of which struck residential areas in Tel Aviv and Bat Yam.
Israel also carried out targeted assassinations of senior Iranian commanders and veteran nuclear scientists after reportedly smuggling kamikaze drones into the country. Iranian security officials said they discovered Israeli drones and explosives hidden in Tehran following the attacks.
