The targeted killing deepens a devastating campaign that began in February with the assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
April 6 — The head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ intelligence organization is dead.
Iranian state media announced Majid Khademi’s death on Monday without explaining how he died or where his body was found. Israel quickly filled the silence.
The Israeli military took immediate responsibility for a Sunday night operation in the Iranian capital. “The Israeli Air Force, acting with precise IDF intelligence, conducted a strike in Tehran and eliminated Majid Khademi,” the military said in a public statement.
They detailed his background, describing Khademi as one of the IRGC’s most senior commanders. He built a vast reservoir of military and security experience over decades. His intelligence apparatus functioned as the regime’s nervous system, tracking dissidents at home and projecting asymmetric force abroad. Taking him out wasn’t just a tactical move. It was an amputation.
This assassination marks another high-value decapitation in the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran. The conflict violently erupted on February 28 when a wave of coordinated strikes killed Iran’s veteran Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, alongside a cadre of top military commanders.
They haven’t stopped hunting since.
When a government loses its supreme leader and its top intelligence chief in under six weeks, how long can the center hold?
The IRGC relies heavily on strict, top-down command. Khamenei’s death already created an unprecedented power vacuum in Tehran. Khademi’s targeted removal now strips the Guards of crucial operational continuity right when they face relentless bombardments and crippling internal panic. You can’t replace decades of institutional memory overnight, especially when the recruitment office is a known target.
State television’s brief, sanitized broadcast about Khademi highlights Tehran’s desperate struggle to control reality. Admitting a successful Israeli airstrike in the heart of the capital exposes catastrophic failures in Iranian air defense and counter-espionage networks. So, state media reports the death and buries the cause.
Israel and the United States have systematically dismantled Iran’s highest echelon of leadership. The February strikes fundamentally broke the Middle Eastern status quo, dragging a decades-long shadow war into the light and turning it into an overt campaign to dismantle the Iranian security state piece by piece.
The regime is rapidly running out of loyal veterans to fill the empty chairs, and Israeli intelligence keeps finding whoever steps up next.
