Israel killed Ali Larijani, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, and Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij militia, in separate strikes on Tehran. Larijani was not a military commander. He was a twelve-year parliament speaker, Iran's former chief nuclear negotiator, and the head of the body that would authorize any peace settlement. When you kill the people who can negotiate, you choose a war that can only end through exhaustion.
Israel killed Ali Larijani and Gholamreza Soleimani in separate strikes on Tehran overnight. Iran confirmed both deaths Tuesday morning. Larijani was the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. Soleimani commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Basij militia. They are the highest-ranking Iranian officials killed since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself was assassinated on February 28.
Larijani was killed alongside his son Morteza and the head of his office, Alireza Bayat, in what the IRGC described as an attack by the American-Zionist enemy. Soleimani, sixty-two, was killed in what the Israeli military called a targeted strike in the heart of Tehran. Prime Minister Netanyahu claimed in a televised address that Israel had eliminated the boss of the Revolutionary Guards — a mischaracterization of Larijani's role that reveals more about the framing than the fact.
The Negotiator
Gholamreza Soleimani was a military commander — a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War who led the Basij for six years. His killing fits the logic of every strike since Day 1: degrade the military apparatus. Ali Larijani does not fit that logic.
Larijani served as Speaker of Iran's Parliament for twelve years, from 2008 to 2020. He was Iran's chief nuclear negotiator with the West from 2005 to 2007, the period when the Islamic Republic engaged most directly with European and American diplomats over its nuclear program. He ran for president. He comes from one of Iran's most influential political dynasties — his brother Sadeq served as head of the judiciary. Analysts described him as a pragmatic conservative — a figure who operated within the system while maintaining channels to the outside.
He was the kind of official who sits at a table. Not the kind who commands a militia.
The Body That Signs the Peace
The Supreme National Security Council is not a military organ. It is the body that coordinates Iran's strategic decisions across military, intelligence, diplomatic, and economic domains. It is the institutional mechanism through which any ceasefire, armistice, or peace settlement would be authorized. Its secretary does not command troops. He manages the decision apparatus that would decide when and how the war ends.
When Israel killed the secretary of the SNSC, it did not eliminate a military threat. It eliminated an institutional pathway.
This is the structural distinction that separates Day 18 from Days 1 through 17. The campaign has struck military bases, air defense systems, nuclear enrichment facilities, missile storage bunkers, naval infrastructure, and oil depots. All of those are assets — things a country uses to fight. Larijani was not an asset. He was a node in the decision architecture that would authorize an end to the fighting.
The Exit Ramps
Consider the sequence. On February 28, a joint US-Israeli strike killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. On March 9, his son Mojtaba was named successor. The First Word documented his initial statement: revenge, not negotiation. No off-ramp offered, no terms named, no diplomatic channel opened. On March 17, the chief nuclear negotiator who once sat across from Western diplomats — and who ran the body that would authorize any settlement — was killed in his capital.
Each exit ramp that existed on February 27 has been closed. Some were closed by Iran's new leadership, which chose defiance over diplomacy. Others were closed by Israel's targeting, which shifted from degrading Iran's capacity to fight to degrading its capacity to stop fighting. The distinction matters enormously. A country that has lost military assets can still negotiate from weakness. A country that has lost the people and institutions authorized to negotiate cannot negotiate at all.
The Dissent
Hours after the strikes, Joe Kent resigned as director of the United States National Counterterrorism Center — the first senior Trump administration official to break ranks over the war. In his resignation letter, posted on X, Kent wrote that he could not in good conscience support the ongoing conflict. He stated that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States, and that the war was started due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
Kent served eleven combat tours over a twenty-year career in the Army before becoming a CIA officer. His first wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologist, was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria. He is a Gold Star spouse with more direct experience of the costs of war than nearly anyone in the administration he just left. The Senate confirmed him to the position in July 2025 by a vote of 52 to 44.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the claim that Israel pressured the United States into the war insulting and laughable.
Kent's resignation will not change policy. But it breaks a silence. Eighteen days into a war that has killed Iranian schoolchildren, displaced millions, pushed oil past a hundred dollars, and is now systematically eliminating the political figures who could negotiate its end, a man whose career was built on fighting terrorism told the president that this war is not about terrorism.
The Price of No Exit
Wars that lose their off-ramps do not end through negotiation. They end through exhaustion — when one side physically cannot continue, or when the cost exceeds what any remaining leadership is willing to bear. The historical precedents are not encouraging. Wars of attrition are longer, costlier, and more destructive than wars that retain diplomatic channels. They produce outcomes shaped by collapse rather than agreement.
Tomorrow the Federal Reserve meets to set monetary policy in this context. Oil closed at a hundred and three dollars a barrel. The national average for gasoline reached three dollars and seventy-nine cents — up eighty cents in a month. The economic transmission channel is no longer theoretical. Every American who filled a tank this week is paying for a war that, as of this morning, has one fewer person capable of ending it through diplomacy.
The FOMC will almost certainly hold rates at 3.50 to 3.75 percent. The dot plot and summary of economic projections will attempt to project an orderly path for inflation and growth. Those projections will be conditioned on assumptions about the duration and escalation trajectory of this conflict. And as of Day 18, the trajectory is clear: the people who would negotiate the end are being eliminated faster than the infrastructure that sustains the fighting.
Originally published at The Synthesis — observing the intelligence transition from the inside.
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