Israel Rushes to Intensify Iran Strikes Within 48-Hour Window, Officials Say

On March 17, Israel assassinated Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, in Tehran — and the strikes did not stop there. The same day Israel said it had killed Iranian intelligence minister Esmaeil Khatib in an overnight airstrike. Now, with Iran's leadership decimated and its military posture in freefall, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to push harder and faster.

Four people briefed on the matter said Netanyahu gave the order on Tuesday for the military to accelerate its attacks with a 48-hour deadline, a directive that reflects Israel's stated strategy of systematically dismantling the Islamic Republic's chain of command. Following the strikes on Tuesday, Netanyahu said his country was actively seeking to dismantle the remaining Iranian regime and hoped the people would take to the streets.

The acceleration order came as the U.S. intelligence community delivered a stark assessment to Capitol Hill. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence told senators on Wednesday that the Iranian regime had suffered major losses in the joint U.S. and Israeli strikes. "The regime in Iran appears to be intact but largely degraded due to attacks on its leadership and military capabilities," she said in her opening statement. "Its conventional military power projection capabilities have largely been destroyed, leaving limited options. Iran's strategic position has been significantly degraded."

The leadership losses driving that assessment have been sweeping. Larijani is the highest-ranking Iranian official killed in U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran since former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was assassinated on the first day of the war on February 28. Having been appointed as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council by President Masoud Pezeshkian in August 2025, Larijani was described by numerous outlets as the most powerful man or de facto leader of Iran in the lead-up to the 2026 Iran war. According to The New York Times, Larijani effectively ran Iran since January 2026 and was in "charge of crushing, with lethal force, the recent protests demanding the end of Islamic rule."

The Israeli military announced Wednesday that an overnight airstrike killed Esmaeil Khatib, Iran's minister of intelligence, marking the third significant assassination of a top Iranian security official in two days. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the "cowardly assassination of my dear colleagues," saying they "left us heartbroken."

Netanyahu said the alleged killing of Larijani was part of an effort to give Iranians a way to overthrow their government. "This morning we eliminated Ali Larijani, the boss of the Revolutionary Guards, which is the gang of gangsters that actually runs Iran," Netanyahu said in a televised statement, noting that overthrowing clerical authorities "will not happen all at once."

The U.S. and Israel began their series of strikes against Iran on February 28, with stated aims of inducing regime change and targeting Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program. The death toll from the war has risen to more than 1,500 people in Iran, over 1,000 in Lebanon, 15 in Israel, and 13 U.S. military members, as well as a number of civilians on land and sea in the Gulf region.

Netanyahu has argued more specifically than Trump that the attacks on Iranian leaders are a direct attempt to incite a counter-revolution. "We are undermining this regime in the hope of giving the Iranian people an opportunity to remove it," Netanyahu said in announcing Larijani's death. Whether that hope is realized remains deeply uncertain. Sina Azodi, director of the Middle East Studies program at George Washington University, told CNN that Larijani's killing might prove counterproductive. "From a practical standpoint, of course, it's an achievement for the Israelis. But I'm afraid that it will ultimately lead to a hardening of the regime and not the collapse of the regime," Azodi said.