On March 1, 2026, the Iranian media confirmed the death of the Chief of the General Staff Seyed Abdolrahim Mousavi, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Mohammad Pakpour, the Minister of Defense Aziz Nasirzadeh, and the Senior Military Advisor and Secretary of the Defense Council, Ali Shamkhani.

Iranian state television also confirmed the death of the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was eliminated in his Tehran residence on the morning of February 28, while attending a meeting with various officials of the Islamic regime. After obtaining detailed intelligence, Israel launched the attack with 30 missiles, targeting the site and killing Khamenei and his associates. Iranian authorities have announced a 40-day period of mourning, with the next seven days declared non-working days.

Khamenei was most likely caught by surprise as he did not expect an imminent attack by the US and Israel which was launched in the early monring hours of Saturday February 28 and did not expect to be targeted either, since the negotiations were apparently still ongoing, with a new meeting set for the following week. The success of the raid that led to the elimination of the Supreme Leader is the result of excellent intelligence work by Israel, which also managed to identify his remains in a short time.

The war with Iran is now entering its second day with intense raids over Tehran and other major Iranian cities, this time without the presence of Khamenei and other senior Iranian officials. The regime has already announced processes for appointing replacements; among them, Ahmad Vahidi (Vahid Shahcheraghi), a former defense and interior minister, as the new IRGC commander. The individual had been appointed as temporary chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps following the death of Hossein Salami during the June 2025 Twelve-Day War.

Originally from Shiraz, Vahidi is under US sanctions for the violent repression of demonstrators in 2022. As indicated in the October 2022 press release by the US Department of Treasury reporting the sanctions, Iran’s Interior Minister at the time, Ahmad Vahidi, maintained oversight of all Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) deployed to suppress protests in Iran. The LEF has a long history of using lethal force against demonstrators, making it a key instrument of the Iranian regime’s ongoing repression of its own people. The LEF’s actions have resulted in thousands of deaths, including dozens of casualties during demonstrations against the Morality Police. In the past, Vahidi warned Iranian women that government security forces would penalize those “breaking the rules” with respect to hijab compliance and explicitly threatened protesters who continued to challenge the regime.

Vahidi has been on Interpol’s “wanted list” since 2007 at the request of the authorities in Argentina, where he is wanted on the basis of his involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish AMIA center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured over 300. The Iranian regime rejected the accusations, defining them as “baseless, unfounded, and propaganda”.

Vahidi, who led the overseas operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (ICRGC) at the time of the attack, has been indicated by Argentina as being one of the masterminds behind the bombing. In May 2024 the Argentine Foreign Ministry officially announced that Interpol had issued a red notice for his arrest.

Vahidi is also sanctioned by the European Union and he will most likely be one of the next targets of the US and Israel.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)