The chief of intelligence of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed in an airstrike on Monday, state media said.
Majid Khademi, who accused Donald Trump of fuelling anti-government protests in Iran, is the latest key figure to have been killed in strikes since the US-Israel war on the Islamic Republic began on 28 February.
The Israeli military on Monday claimed it killed Khademi, along with another top IRGC officer, in overnight strikes. “Khademi was one of the IRGC’s most senior commanders and had accumulated extensive experience over many years,” the IDF wrote on X.
Israel also claimed it killed Yazdan Mir, known by his alias Sardar Bagheri, who headed the IRGC Quds Force’s clandestine Unit 840. They were reported to be among at least 25 people killed in overnight strikes on Iran after Trump threatened to turn the country into “hell” if it refused to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
The IRGC confirmed Khademi’s death, saying that the “powerful and educated” head of its Intelligence Organisation was “martyred in the criminal terrorist attack by the American-Zionist enemy… at dawn today”.
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said after Khademi’s death that his country would “continue to hunt them down one by one”, referring to Iran’s senior leadership.
Khademi replaced his predecessor, Mohammad Kazemi, in 2025 after he was killed during the 12-day Iran-Israel war. He spent decades in intelligence and counter-espionage roles while rising through Iran’s security apparatus.
Before his appointment, Khademi headed the Guards’ Intelligence Protection Organisation 2022 onwards, charged with internal surveillance and counter-intelligence, and held senior roles in Iran’s defence ministry.
The IRGC intelligence arm is one of Iran’s most powerful security bodies, with a central role in domestic surveillance to counter foreign influence, and often operating in parallel with the civilian intelligence ministry.
Israel has relentlessly targeted key figures in Iran’s political and military leadership, including supreme leader Ali Khamenei, who was among the first victims of the US-Israeli strikes that started the war on 28 February.
Other senior figures killed in strikes since then include security chief Ali Larijani and the Guards’ commander-in-chief Mohammad Pakpour. Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani and IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini have also been killed in Israeli strikes.
Trump has threatened to escalate American attacks on Tehran if a deal has not been reached to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route for oil and gas, by 8pm EST on Tuesday. In an expletive-laden post on his platform Truth Social, Trump said the US would start hitting power plants and bridges to send Iran “back to the Stone Age”, adding: “Open the F** Strait, you crazy ba**, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH.”
Amid reports that Iranian officials are reluctant to take part in face-to-face peace talks over fears they too could be assassinated, Trump said late on Sunday that negotiators would be granted “immunity from death”.
Iran’s parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf called the threat to target Iran’s civilian infrastructure “reckless”. “You won’t gain anything through war crimes,” Qalibaf wrote on X. “The only real solution is respecting the rights of the Iranian people and ending this dangerous game.”
In an effort to stop the fighting, Egyptian, Pakistani and Turkish mediators have sent Iran and the US a joint proposal calling for a 45-day ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to give time to try and find a way to end the war.
But Iran swiftly rejected the proposal, saying it will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for a “temporary ceasefire”.
