Who was Ali Larijani, veteran Iranian politician, backroom powerbroker, killed in Israeli air strike?

The scion of a leading clerical family who rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran's theocratic system of ⁠government

Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani, who was killed in an air strike on Tuesday, was one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic Republic, an architect of its security policy, and ​a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until the supreme leader's death in an air attack last month.

Larijani, 67, was killed by a US-Israeli air attack as he was visiting his daughter in the eastern outskirts of a Tehran suburb, Reuters reported quoting Iran's semi-official Fars news agency.

Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said earlier on Tuesday that he had been killed in an Israeli strike.

As per the statement from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Larijani was killed along with his son Morteza Larijani and the head of his office, Alireza Bayat, as well as several guards, Associated Press reported.

Scion of leading clerical family

The scion of a leading clerical family with brothers who rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran's theocratic system of ⁠government.

A Revolutionary Guard Corps commander during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he became head of Iran's national broadcaster before stints running the Supreme National Security Council either side of his membership of Parliament, where he was Speaker for 12 years.

His role as the ⁠ultimate insider in Ali Khamenei's Iran gave him responsibilities across a wide portfolio that included critical nuclear negotiations with the West, managing Tehran's regional ties and the suppression of internal unrest, according to Reuters.

Despite his ‌unswerving commitment to Khamenei's absolute rule, he advocated a more cautionary approach than did other hardline ​figures, sometimes willing to further Iran's goals through diplomacy and to meet domestic opposition with soothing words.

But despite his relative moderation, he played an allegedly central role in the bloody crushing of mass protests in January. The violent repression, which killed thousands of protesters, led Washington to impose sanctions on him last month.

After the US-Israeli strikes began on February 28, he was one of the first major Iranian figures to speak, accusing Iran's attackers of seeking to disintegrate and plunder the country. He also issued stern warnings against any would-be protesters.

The strikes represented the ultimate failure of a nuclear policy he had helped design, which attempted to build atomic capability at the boundary of international rules without provoking an attack.

In pursuing that policy, he projected the voice of the supreme leader, using his abilities as a communicator ​to build a rapport with Western negotiators and lay out Khamenei's vision in frequent television ⁠interviews.

Even had he survived the current war, that role may have been curtailed. In the jostling for control after Khamenei's death, it was the Guards who took an ever greater part, leaving fewer decisions to political powerbrokers like Larijani.

Rise after the revolution

Ali Larijani was born in 1958 in Iraq's great Shi'ite Muslim shrine city of Najaf, the home of many major Iranian clerics like his father who had fled what they saw as the oppressive rule of the shah.

He moved to Iran as a child, later focusing on his studies and earning a philosophy PhD. But the clerical milieu of his family would have made him keenly aware of the revolutionary religious currents surging through his homeland in ⁠the 1970s.

When Larijani was 20 years old, ‌the Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and installed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini as supreme leader.

When Iraq invaded Iran along a 500-mile front months after the revolution, Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a new, ideologically driven, military unit devoted to Khomeini.

As the war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq became the great crucible testing the mettle of a new generation of Iranian leaders, Larijani rose up to ‌become a staff officer, a commander focused on the organisational duties behind the front that dictated the war effort.

His success in that role, alongside his family connections, helped spur his rise in the new Islamic Republic. They also ensured his close ties to the Guards, a military institution whose importance would continue growing throughout his ⁠life.

After the war, Larijani became Culture Minister and then head of Iran's state broadcaster, IRIB, a critical role in a country where ideological messaging has always been central to the exercise of internal power.

Larijani was appointed to the Cabinet by President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, in office from 1989 to 1997. Khamenei, meanwhile, became supreme leader in 1989, ‌upon the death of Khomeini.

Larijani would have a ringside seat for the years-long power struggle between Rafsanjani and Khamenei - an unrivalled lesson in high Iranian politics.

His time at IRIB was followed by a stint as ‌head of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran's top foreign and security policy body. A failed presidential bid followed, in 2005, before his election to Parliament two years later.

Chief nuclear negotiator

As chief nuclear negotiator from 2005 to 2007, Larijani was responsible for defending what Tehran says is its right to enrich uranium - a process required to make fuel for a nuclear power plant but which can also yield material for a warhead.

Pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme had ratcheted up after the discovery in 2003 that the country had enrichment facilities it had not disclosed to international inspectors, prompting fears it was seeking a bomb and leading to sanctions.

It has always denied wanting a bomb.

Larijani likened European incentives to abandon nuclear fuel production to "exchanging ⁠a pearl for a candy bar". Though ⁠he was widely regarded as a pragmatist, he said that Iran's nuclear programme "can never be destroyed".

Larijani made repeated visits to Moscow and met President Vladimir Putin, helping Khamenei manage a key ally and world power that acted as a counterweight to pressure from the first and second administrations of US President Donald Trump.

He was also tasked with advancing negotiations with China, which led to a 25-year cooperation agreement in 2021.

As Parliament speaker from 2008 to 2020 he had a role in ensuring that a nuclear deal with six world powers in 2015 would meet the requirements of sceptical Iranian hardliners. Trump withdrew the US from the hard-negotiated agreement during his first term, in 2018.

Role in crushing protests

Larijani was again appointed head of the Supreme National Security Council last year, after a 12-day air war launched by Israel.

He was working to avert an attack on Iran until shortly before the war began.

Washington denounced him for the council's role in crushing mass protests in January, even after he ​and other senior politicians had initially said that demonstrations over the economy were permissible.

According to a US ​government announcement detailing sanctions against him and other officials in response to the crackdown, Larijani was at the forefront of the repression.

Rights groups say thousands of people were killed in a crackdown, the worst domestic unrest in Iran since the Islamic Revolution.

One of Larijani's daughters, meanwhile, was dismissed from a medical teaching position at Emory University, in the U.S., following protests by Iranian-American activists angered by his role suppressing the demonstrations.

(With agency inputs)