Day 18: Israel Claims Larijani Killed, Basij Commander Dead - Trump's Own Intel Chief Quits Calling the War a Lie

The most consequential day of the US-Israel war on Iran arrived without warning. By Tuesday evening, Israel claimed to have killed Ali Larijani - the man running Iran's Supreme National Security Council - and the commander of the Basij militia. Hours earlier, Trump's own counterterrorism chief had resigned calling the war unjustified. Amnesty International confirmed the US bombed a primary school. In a city called Arak, a three-day-old infant and his two-year-old sister were killed by a missile strike on their home.

Explosions across Iranian cities continued on Day 18. (File/Pexels)

Larijani Claimed Dead: The Biggest Target Since Khamenei

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced on Tuesday that Ali Larijani - secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic - had been killed. If confirmed, Larijani would be the highest-ranking Iranian official assassinated since Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on February 28 on the first day of the war, according to Al Jazeera.

Katz framed the alleged killing in explicit strategic terms: "The leaders of the regime are being killed and their capabilities terminated. Our army is working with strength to continue to hit and terminate the missile capabilities as well as the strategic infrastructure."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went further on Israeli television, calling Larijani "the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, which is the gang of gangsters that actually runs Iran" - a characterization that conflates Larijani's civilian security role with IRGC command.

"This morning we eliminated Ali Larijani, the boss of the Revolutionary Guards... If we persist in this - we will give them a chance to take their fate into their own hands." - Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, March 17, 2026

Iran has not confirmed Larijani's death. Iranian state media published what it said was a handwritten note by Larijani as the claim circulated - though it was unclear whether the note was recent or intended as proof of life. The note commemorated 84 Iranian sailors killed in a US attack on their naval vessel in international waters, whose funerals were planned for Tuesday.

Larijani was last confirmed publicly alive on Friday - just four days before the claimed killing - at Tehran's Al-Quds Day rally in support of Palestinians, standing alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian. The lag between his last confirmed appearance and Tuesday's claim has fueled uncertainty about the timeline and whether the intelligence behind the strike was current.

Who Was Ali Larijani - The "Kennedy" of Iran

Larijani was not a simple bureaucrat. He was the connective tissue of the Iranian state - the man who had survived every political era of the Islamic Republic and emerged more powerful each time. To understand what his potential death means, you have to understand what he was.

Born in 1958 in Najaf, Iraq, to a religious scholarly family from Amol, Iran, Larijani's personal history is inseparable from the history of modern Iran. Time magazine called his family the "Kennedys of Iran" in 2009 - five brothers, each occupying a different pillar of Iranian institutional power. One led the judiciary. Another served in the Assembly of Experts, the clerical council that chooses supreme leaders.

Larijani himself had a distinctive profile for an Iranian hard-liner: a mathematics and computer science degree from Sharif University of Technology, then a doctorate in Western philosophy from the University of Tehran - his thesis on Immanuel Kant. He served as culture minister, ran state television for a decade, then served three consecutive terms as speaker of parliament from 2008 to 2020.

That parliamentary tenure coincided with some of the most consequential moments in Iranian foreign policy - including multiple rounds of nuclear negotiations with Western powers. Larijani was the lead nuclear negotiator before Javad Zarif, building a reputation as a pragmatist who understood the West well enough to negotiate with it while remaining conservative enough to keep Iran's hardliner establishment onside.

When the US-Israeli war began on February 28 and Khamenei was killed on its first day, Larijani stepped forward as the voice of Iran's resistance narrative. "America and the Zionist regime have set the heart of the Iranian nation ablaze," he wrote on social media the day after Khamenei's death. "We will burn their hearts. We will make the Zionist criminals and the shameless Americans regret their actions."

He was expected to play a central role in the transitional council now governing Iran after Khamenei's killing - making him, in the view of Israeli military planners, a legitimate high-value target. The question now is who fills the vacuum he leaves, and whether that person shares his capacity to hold the Iranian state together under fire.

Iranians have held mass rallies despite the ongoing strikes. (File/Pexels)

The Basij Commander Also Killed: Gholamreza Soleimani

The same day Israel claimed Larijani's death, the Israeli military announced on X that it had also killed Gholamreza Soleimani - not to be confused with Qasem Soleimani, killed by a US drone in 2020 - who commanded the Basij, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' internal security paramilitary force.

The Basij is the backbone of domestic control in Iran. It is the force that suppressed the 2009 Green Movement, the 2019 protests, and the 2022 uprising following the death of Mahsa Amini. It runs youth militias, controls key urban neighborhoods in Iranian cities, and serves as the eyes and ears of the IRGC inside civilian society. Its commander holds a position of enormous internal power.

Israel's military statement said the operation was "guided by precise intelligence" and that both killings were part of an ongoing campaign to "terminate" Iran's command structure. This represents a two-pronged approach: degrade Iran's military capacity through strikes on infrastructure and missile stockpiles, while simultaneously decapitating the political and security leadership that gives the war effort its direction and legitimacy.

The dual killing on a single day marks a new phase in the targeting campaign. Before March 17, the most significant command-level killings had occurred on the war's first day, when Khamenei and IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour were killed in the opening wave of strikes. Since then, the campaign had focused heavily on infrastructure. Tuesday's claims suggest Israel has rebuilt or expanded intelligence on the whereabouts of Iran's surviving leadership.

Al Jazeera's Nida Ibrahim, reporting from the occupied West Bank, noted that even if the killings are confirmed, "that does not mean the whole regime has fallen." Iran's institutional depth means leadership losses, however significant, do not automatically translate to collapse. But they do create uncertainty, decision-making gaps, and the psychological toll of watching colleagues and allies eliminated one by one.

Trump's Own Counterterrorism Chief Resigns - "Iran Was Not a Threat"

The same afternoon that Israel's claimed killings dominated global headlines, a separate explosion detonated inside Washington. Joe Kent - Trump's personally endorsed director of the National Counterterrorism Center and the most senior intelligence official overseeing the Iran conflict - resigned, publishing his resignation letter on X.

Kent's letter was not a quiet administrative exit. It was an indictment.

"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." - Joe Kent, resignation letter, March 17, 2026

The word "imminent" carries specific legal weight in this context. Under US law, presidents can authorize military force without congressional approval only when there is an imminent threat to the nation. Under international law, preemptive military action requires a similar standard. Kent - the man whose job it was to assess exactly these threats - is now on record saying that standard was not met. Al Jazeera reported that Kent referenced the concept of imminence explicitly, understanding its legal significance.

Kent also made his resignation personal. His wife was killed by an ISIS suicide bomber in Syria in 2019. He invoked her death in the letter:

"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. My wife was killed in a war manufactured by Israel." - Joe Kent, resignation letter, March 17, 2026

Trump responded to reporters within hours of the resignation becoming public. "I always thought he was weak on security," Trump said. "It's a good thing that he's out, because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realised what a threat Iran was." He added that he "didn't know him well" - a claim undercut by his own prior endorsement of Kent's failed congressional campaign.

Kent is the highest-profile resignation from the Trump administration since the war began on February 28. He is not an anti-war Democrat or a deep-state holdover - he is a US Army Ranger and Special Forces veteran with 11 combat deployments in the Middle East, confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate after a nomination championed by Trump himself and praised by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

His departure strips the administration of a figure who could credibly speak to the military and intelligence community's view of the war's justification. It also deepens a fracture inside the MAGA coalition. Influential voices within Trump's own political movement - including figures who campaigned hard on "America First" and ending Middle East entanglements - have turned against the Iran war, citing the same logic Kent spelled out in his letter.

The political fracture inside Washington deepened on Day 18. (File/Pexels)

Amnesty International Confirms: US Bombed a Primary School Full of Girls

The third major development on Day 18 came from Amnesty International, which published the findings of its independent investigation into the Minab school massacre on March 16 - the findings reverberating globally through Tuesday.

On February 28 - the first day of the US-Israel war - a school in Minab, a city in southern Iran, was struck. Initial reports were chaotic. The US and Israel denied involvement. Iranian authorities placed the death toll at over 170, most of them children, most of them girls. The story became one of the defining moral flashpoints of the conflict.

Amnesty's investigation used satellite imagery, video footage, and forensic analysis of munitions debris to reach its conclusion: a US Tomahawk cruise missile struck the school directly. "Tomahawk missiles are used exclusively by US forces in this conflict and are precision-guided missiles," the organization stated. The school sat adjacent to an IRGC compound - but the school building itself was "directly struck," not the compound.

Amnesty concluded that US forces likely relied on outdated intelligence designating the school site as a military target - likely from an era when the IRGC compound included that building. The school children who died were not the intended target. They were killed because the US military fired a precision weapon at an imprecise picture of reality.

"This points to a failure by US forces to take feasible precautions to avoid civilian harm in carrying out the attack, which is a serious breach of international humanitarian law," Amnesty said.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had already offered the administration's posture on such findings, telling reporters on March 2: "No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire... We fight to win." He called the campaign "the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history." The Minab finding suggests a different definition of precision than the one civilians and their families use.

United Nations experts described the school attack as "a grave assault on children." US Democratic senators demanded answers from the Trump administration. UNESCO condemned it. The Amnesty report now provides a formal, evidentiary basis for those condemnations - and potentially for future accountability proceedings.

Arak: An Infant and His Sister in the Ruins

While the geopolitical machinery of Day 18 turned - claimed assassinations, resignations, legal investigations - a family in the Iranian city of Arak was destroyed.

Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed that a three-day-old infant and his two-year-old sister were killed when a US-Israeli strike hit their home. Their mother and grandmother were also killed in the same attack, according to Iran's English-language Press TV, citing the IRGC. The family had no apparent military connection. The strike hit a residential building.

The Arak deaths were reported on a day when similar stories emerged from across Iran. Attacks were reported in northern Tehran near the Saadabad Palace complex, in Karaj, in Shahriar, and in Shiraz. The cumulative death toll since February 28 now stands at at least 1,444 killed and 18,551 injured in Iran, according to a tracker maintained by Al Jazeera. These figures do not include deaths in Gulf states hit by Iranian retaliatory strikes, which have killed at least 20 across the region, or the 13 US soldiers killed since the war began.

The Gulf Continues to Burn

Iran's retaliatory campaign against US assets and Gulf state infrastructure continued in parallel on Day 18. The UAE government reported a fire at its Fujairah oil industry zone following a drone attack. Falling missile debris killed a Pakistani national in the Abu Dhabi district of Bani Yas - the UAE's defense forces were intercepting incoming missiles when debris struck the civilian. The UAE temporarily closed its airspace.

Qatar's Ministry of Defence said it successfully intercepted 13 of 14 ballistic missiles launched from Iran in one volley. Saudi Arabia's defense ministry reported intercepting 12 drones in the kingdom's Eastern Region. Bahrain announced it had now neutralized 129 missiles and 221 drones since the war began. Kuwait reported a drone takedown and separately announced the arrest of 14 Kuwaitis and two Lebanese nationals with alleged Hezbollah ties, accused of plotting sabotage inside the country.

Meanwhile, Trump threatened NATO allies over the Strait of Hormuz. The US has been demanding allied warships join a coalition to keep the strait open - a critical chokepoint through which roughly 20 percent of global oil flows. Most NATO members have declined or stalled. Trump told reporters that NATO faces "a very bad future" if allies fail to help with the Iran operation, signaling that the Iran war is now a direct stress test on the Atlantic alliance itself.

What Comes Next: The Decapitation Question

The central strategic bet of the Israeli military campaign has always been leadership decapitation - the idea that killing enough people at the top of the Iranian system will cause it to collapse or sue for peace. Day 18 represents the theory's highest-stakes test yet.

The killing of Khamenei on Day 1 was supposed to be fatal to the regime. It was not. Iran formed a transitional council, continued missile and drone operations, and maintained its military response across the Gulf region. The killing of Pakpour, the original IRGC commander, did not break the IRGC's operational capability. Mojtaba Khamenei, the supreme leader's son, emerged as the new supreme leader despite previously having no formal state role.

The argument for continued decapitation is that each death compounds on the others - creating cumulative disruption, trust deficits, and decision paralysis. The argument against it, articulated by analysts and now apparently by Trump's own counterterrorism director, is that it is radicalizing Iran's leadership, concentrating power in more ideologically extreme hands, and generating the kind of existential siege mentality that historically makes states fight harder, not less.

Larijani was, in many respects, the most moderate significant figure remaining in the Iranian hierarchy. He was the Kant-reading pragmatist, the nuclear negotiator, the man who understood Western interlocutors. His death - if confirmed - does not remove a moderate voice from inside Iran's decision-making. It removes the last pragmatist. What replaces him is likely to be less interested in how the West thinks and more focused on how much pain Iran can inflict before the US political will collapses.

Joe Kent's resignation letter is, in this sense, an answer to that calculation. The US political will is already cracking. The war began 18 days ago. The man Trump appointed to direct counterterrorism has resigned saying Iran was never a threat. The man Trump appointed to lead the US Navy counterterrorism operations now no longer believes in the war. The children of Minab are confirmed dead by a Tomahawk. A three-day-old infant in Arak is dead.

Whether Day 18 marks the beginning of the end of the war - through a collapse of Iranian resistance, a collapse of US political support, or some negotiated outcome brokered by parties not yet fully visible - is the defining question of March 2026. What is clear on Tuesday evening is that the war is not ending. It is deepening. Every claimed victory on one side feeds a new layer of ferocity on the other. The Strait of Hormuz remains contested. Oil sits near $120 a barrel. And somewhere in Tehran, officials who may or may not still be alive are deciding what comes next.