Israel claims to have killed more senior Iranian leaders
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Israel claims to have killed more senior members of Iran's leadership; we ask what the death of security chief Ali Larijani could mean for the war.
Also in the programme: in the Afghan capital Kabul, dozens of people have been killed in an airstrike on a drug treatment centre, which the Taliban government has blamed on Pakistan; why is one of the world's most influential tech billionaires in Rome lecturing about the Antichrist? And we hear about the endearing qualities of a newly discovered subatomic particle.
(IMAGE: Ali Larijani, former chairman of the parliament of Iran, attends a press conference after meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut, Lebanon November 15, 2024 / CREDIT: Reuters / Thaier Al-Sudani / File Photo)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.4 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.1 | We're coming to you live from London. I'm Leila Nathu. |
| 0:16.3 | Let us start in Iran, where Israel says it has killed Tehran's security chief, Ali Larajani, one of the |
| 0:23.1 | most senior figures in the Islamic Republic. Iran has not confirmed his death, but Israel's |
| 0:28.4 | Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, made this televised statement. |
| 0:33.3 | This morning, we eliminated Ali Larajani. Ali Larajani is the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, which is a gang of gangsters that in practice run Iran. |
| 0:43.9 | Alongside him, we also eliminated the commander of the besiege, the helpers of the gangsters, |
| 0:49.1 | who spread terror in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities against the population. |
| 0:55.3 | We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it. |
| 1:01.8 | This will not happen all at once, and it will not happen easily. |
| 1:06.5 | But if we persist, we will give them an opportunity to take their fate into their own hands. |
| 1:14.6 | Well, Ali Larajani was a close ally of the former Supreme Leader Ayatolli Ali Khamenei, |
| 1:20.3 | who was killed on the first day of U.S. Israeli strikes on Iran more than two weeks ago. |
| 1:24.6 | And he previously represented Iran in nuclear negotiations between 2005 and 2007. |
| 1:31.5 | While Israel says it will continue to hunt down Iran's leadership, Yol-Anal is our Middle East correspondent in Jerusalem. |
| 1:37.7 | I spoke to her just before we came on air. |
| 1:40.0 | There are only reports in the Israeli media saying that he was in an apartment that he was using as a hideout with his son, but that has not been officially confirmed. |
| 1:49.6 | The Israeli Prime Minister's office just saying that Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the elimination of senior officials in the Iranian regime overnight. |
| 1:58.0 | And a lot being said about the importance of Ali Larajani, how he was considered such a |
| 2:03.1 | powerful man in the Iranian regime because of his position as Secretary of the National Security |
| 2:08.4 | Council, because he was a former nuclear negotiator, somebody who was very close to the late |
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