Israel’s opening strikes against Iran eliminated a series of top regime officials, including Security Council Secretary Ali Shamkhani and the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Pakpour, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed on Saturday night.
In a subsequent statement on Sunday, the IDF said it had eliminated 40 senior Iranian commanders in the opening strikes, including the chief of staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, Abdolrahim Mousavi, who oversaw the firing of hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel during the June 2025 war.
Mousavi succeeded Mohammad Bagheri, who was killed in Israel’s opening strikes in June 2025’s Operation “Rising Lion.”
🔴ELIMINATED: Abdolrahim Mousavi, the Iranian Chief of Staff of the armed forces.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) March 1, 2026
Additionally, the IDF struck & eliminated 7 members of the top Iranian security leadership in Tehran and 40 senior commanders. pic.twitter.com/0a4wf3dk9N
The start of “Operation Roaring Lion” saw “hundreds of Israeli Air Force fighter jets, directed by precise IDF intelligence,” striking “hundreds of military targets belonging to the Iranian terror regime,” the army said.
“The operation began with a preemptive strike after the IDF identified several locations throughout Tehran in which senior officials of the Iranian defense establishment had gathered,” according to the statement.
The opening strikes were said to have killed Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Iranian Security Council and a personal adviser to slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei; Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC since the June 2025 war and one of the leaders of the “Destruction of Israel” plan; Saleh Asadi, head of the Intelligence Directorate of the unified combatant command headquarters of the Iranian Armed Forces; and Mohammad Shirazi, Khamenei’s military secretary.
Among those slain in the first attacks were also Iranian Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh; Hossein Jabal Amelian, the head of Iran’s Organization of Defensive Innovation and Research, which advanced Iran’s “projects regarding nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons"; as well as his predecessor, Reza Mozaffari-Nia, who worked on nuclear weapons.
The IDF said that its jets continue “to strike across Iran, based on precise IDF intelligence information, and in cooperation with the U.S. military, in order to protect the State of Israel and the regional coalition.”
Israel’s military “will continue to operate against all those who attempt to harm the security of the State of Israel,” added the IDF statement.
IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin told reporters on Saturday night that the military had carried out two initial strikes: one targeting a “Defense Council compound in Tehran” and a second attack on a “ministry that serves as the central intelligence office of the terror regime and holds its most advanced intelligence capabilities.”
Defrin spoke before U.S. President Donald Trump and Iranian regime media confirmed that Khamenei had been killed in one of the strikes.
The spokesman said that “all the senior officials who participated in these gatherings were responsible for a series of terrorist operations against the State of Israel, against the entire world, and especially against the Iranian people,” adding: “Today, we eliminated them.”
“This is proof that no terror leader who seeks to harm Israeli citizens has immunity—not in the heart of Tehran and not anywhere else,” he stated.
The IAF throughout the day on Saturday carried out “the largest strike wave in its history,” he continued. “Approximately 200 aircraft dropped more than 550 munitions simultaneously on over 500 targets belonging to the Iranian terrorist regime. We struck the regime’s strategic defense systems and targets within its missile array in western and central Iran.”
According to the IDF, the opening wave also dismantled much of Iran’s aerial defense system in western and central parts of the country, paving the way toward establishing aerial superiority over Tehran.
The strikes were launched after Jerusalem saw signs that “the Iranian terror regime has not abandoned its plan to destroy Israel,” he stated.
“We saw that it continued to conceal, fortify and protect its nuclear program, while financing and arming its proxies and attempting to advance its missile production process,” according to Defrin.
The Israeli-U.S. operation “will take as long as it takes,” the spokesman stressed, adding, “It will continue until we achieve all our objectives.”
The IDF launched preemptive airstrikes against the Islamic Republic on Saturday morning to neutralize the threat Tehran poses to the Jewish state, according to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz.
Iran subsequently fired many dozens of ballistic missiles at the Jewish state, killing one and wounding several, with sirens continuing to blare across the country on Sunday morning.
In a statement posted to Truth Social announcing the start of “major combat operations” against the Islamic regime, Trump said that the U.S. objective is “to defend the American people” by neutralizing the “imminent threats from the Iranian regime, a vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” Its “menacing activities directly endanger the United States, our troops, our bases overseas and our allies throughout the world,” said the president.
