Larry F. Gani, who could negotiate a ceasefire, has died. Does that mean the U.S. can only fight for Israel?

More than a dozen senior Iranian government officials, including former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have been killed since the joint airstrikes launched by the United States and Israel against Iran on February 28, 2026.

Another major figure on the death list is Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. It is reported that after Khamenei was assassinated, Israel tracked Larijani for weeks, and ultimately decided to launch an airstrike at dawn on the 17th. The strike targeted Tehran, Iran’s capital.

In the early hours of March 18 local time, Iranian President Pezeshkian issued an official statement, mourning Larijani, who was killed in a recent terrorist attack. In the statement, Pezeshkian spoke highly of Larijani’s outstanding contributions. He emphasized that Larijani’s death is an “immeasurable and massive loss” for the Islamic Republic of Iran.

After the death of supreme leader Khamenei, Larijani’s killing was the most destructive blow the Iranian regime’s core has suffered. His assassination means that Iran has currently lost three critical forces at once: a wartime operator, the “buffer valve” between hardliners and pragmatists, and the pivotal figure who could integrate the three—military, government, and the political-religious sphere—while the life-or-death status of the new supreme leader remains unknown.

The death of this crucial coordinator deals a severe blow to Iran’s already complex power structure, and severely weakens the regime leadership’s ability to unify decision-making. Undoubtedly, this will further intensify uncertainty about the country’s political outlook. As the Revolutionary Guard hardliners’ influence continues to rise, Iran’s future at home and across the Persian Gulf region is sliding toward even more dangerous unknown territory.

August 13, 2025, Beirut, Lebanon: Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, holds a press conference after meeting with the Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament (Photo: Visual China)

Irreplaceable Larijani

Ali Larijani hails from one of Iran’s most prominent Shia clerical families. Time magazine describes him as “Iran’s Kennedy.”

His father, Mirza Hashem Amoli, is a Grand Ayatollah (the highest Shia clerical rank), and one of the spiritual leaders of the Islamic Revolution. His father-in-law is Muttahari, a core aide to Khomeini and an Islamic Revolution theorist. His brother, Sadik Larijani, once served as Iran’s Minister of Justice, and currently serves as the chairman of the Expediency Discernment Council.

This illustrious lineage gives him inherent prestige in Qom, a Shia holy city. This gift of authority has also been repeatedly validated in reality: Larijani has been elected multiple times in parliamentary elections as the top vote-getting candidate. This direct popular mandate from a religious holy city gives him a unique weight in coordinating the religious clerical establishment and secular forces.

Larijani is also one of the few remaining senior heavyweights in Iranian politics. As a veteran who came up during the revolutionary era, his career record spans the entire history of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

He served as Chairman of the Iranian Parliament for 12 consecutive years, accumulating deep experience in legislation and personnel networks; he has held the role of nearly 20 years in the Expediency Discernment Council, which means he has political capital and authority to intervene and arbitrate at the highest levels.

At the same time, Larijani is also a veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. As early as when the Iran-Iraq War was at full intensity, he joined the Revolutionary Guard Corps and, thanks to his outstanding capabilities, quickly rose through the ranks. His more than ten years of military experience means Larijani has deep roots and connections within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, enabling him to earn the trust of Iran’s most powerful armed forces.

After entering politics in 1992, he even spent many years deeply focused on Iran’s cultural and propaganda system, serving as the head of the Iranian national radio and television for a decade.

Such an all-round power figure spanning politics, religion, the military, and propaganda was at one point even seen within the Iranian regime as a potential threat to the supreme leader’s authority. Perhaps it is precisely for this reason that he had his eligibility to run for president revoked twice, in 2021 and 2024. Rather than being a denial of his qualifications, it seems more like an instinctive defense by the system against his overly strong ability to integrate and his potential for mass influence.

February 10, 2026, Muscat, Oman: Ali Larijani (right), Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, meets with Haitham bin Tariq (left), Sultan of Oman (Photo: Visual China)

But not being able to become president does not prevent him from continuing to hold key posts. On August 5, 2025, Larijani was reappointed as Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, responsible for coordinating military forces such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the regular army, and militia organizations, and playing a key decision-making role in formulating Iran’s foreign and security policies.

Although Iran claims it has already lined up multiple successors for every key position in case of unforeseen circumstances, a figure like Larijani is obviously very difficult to replace easily.

As one of the few core figures in Iranian politics who is embedded simultaneously in the security system, bureaucratic structure, and religious network, his deep seniority enables him to coordinate effectively across different power sectors and keep the regime running normally in a highly fragmented political environment. This cross-domain integration ability is also the fundamental reason he could play a central role in critical moments—and at one point after December 2025, he was even seen as a “de facto leader.”

As early as January 2026, Khamenei built a wartime power structure to deal with the risk of decapitation, appointing Larijani as chief wartime coordinator and authorizing him to take overall control of all core national affairs in the event of Khamenei’s unforeseen death.

It is precisely this unique authorization that gave Larijani legitimacy to take overall command after Khamenei’s death, becoming a core guarantee for the functioning of the Iranian regime. It is his presence that suppresses a counterattack by radical hardliners within the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and it also preserves governing space for the government of the moderate President Pezeshkian.

In terms of his personal political performance, Larijani is a typical conservative, rational pragmatist in Iranian politics. He has long served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiation representative, and played a key role in the process that led to the Comprehensive Agreement on the Iranian nuclear issue in 2015. As a result, the outside world generally views him as a representative figure of the moderate conservative camp.

This practical rationality rooted in a conservative stance is still evident even in the extreme predicament of the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict. Although on March 2, 2026, Larijani explicitly stated on a social media platform, “We will not hold any talks with the United States,” according to disclosures by Arab and U.S. officials in early March 2026, only a few hours after the U.S.-Israel airstrikes caused the talks to break down, Larijani—the overall person in charge of Iran’s security—tried to push for the resumption of nuclear talks through the mediator on the Oman side.

Amid an atmosphere in which Iran’s top leader at the time was attacked and killed, the country faced unprecedented external pressure, and “resisting to the end” had become absolute political correctness, Larijani still tried to preserve a diplomatic channel to the negotiating table for Tehran. This move has been widely interpreted by outsiders as an attempt by Iran to make a pragmatic breakthrough in an extreme predicament.

A strong figure who can keep internal forces in check and can facilitate ceasefire negotiations abroad has been killed by Israel.

During the phase in which a power vacuum emerges, Iran’s Islamic regime’s power structure shows a clear trend toward a shift to unilateralization: in the election of the Assembly of Experts, during the supreme leader election process, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pressured members of the Assembly of Experts through “face-to-face meetings and phone calls,” demanding they vote to support Mujtaba Khamenei. After Mujtaba succeeds, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, leveraging its level of organization and control over the nation’s key resources, is embedding itself deeply and taking the lead within the country’s decision-making core.

As stipulated by Iran’s constitution, the Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of government departments. Any military action is directly responsible to the supreme leader and does not require reporting to the president. Therefore, President Pezeshkian is completely unable to restrain the Revolutionary Guard Corps’ extreme actions.

March 13, 2026, Tehran, Iran: Iranian President Pezeshkian sits on the back seat of a motorcycle and attends a procession for Holy City Day (Photo: Visual China)

The most recent example makes this point clear. On March 7, 2026, Pezeshkian, representing a temporary leadership council, announced that it would not proactively attack neighboring countries and apologized to Gulf states for the earlier drone strikes. However, just a few hours after the apology speech aired, Dubai International Airport was hit by an Iranian drone strike.

Of course, the impact of Larijani’s death should not be overemphasized. As a long-time adviser to the supreme leader, the core of his position has long been known for its hardline character. His so-called “pragmatic” coloration reflects more his familiarity with Western discourse and flexibility in negotiation strategy, rather than leaving room for compromise on core demands.

Even if Larijani were still alive, the likelihood of a substantive shift in Iran’s current diplomatic line would be extremely limited. In fact, after Khamenei was killed on February 28, Larijani had already frequently made hardline statements, saying that Iran was ready to fight a long war. In his final public appearance on March 13, he also issued a fierce death threat to Trump, saying, “War can’t be won just by sending a few tweets,” and “Be careful that it isn’t you who is eliminated.”

Therefore, Larijani’s negotiation posture was more of a delaying tactic to serve the regime’s survival, while the United States and Israel have always been committed to pushing for regime change—there is a fundamental clash of goals between the two. Under this contradiction, no compromise on the core stance can occur, whether Larijani lives or dies.

Israel doesn’t want the U.S. to leave the war

Eliminating Larijani has obvious tactical value for Netanyahu’s government.

Larijani’s death will, to some extent, create confusion within Iran’s command system. It will not only reduce air defense pressure facing Israel’s homeland, but also create conditions for the IDF to carry out deeper strikes against nuclear facilities and missile bases.

That same night when Larijani was targeted, the commander of Iran’s Basij militia, Gholamreza Soleimani, was also killed in another airstrike. On March 18 local time, Iran’s intelligence minister Ismail Hatib was also confirmed killed in the strike.

These dense assassination operations vividly reflect Israel’s logic of trying to force Iran’s regime to submit by destroying Iran’s top leadership in the physical realm, driving Iran’s military and political command system toward collapse, and thereby compelling the Iranian regime to yield. Israel’s Defense Minister Katz even said: “Israel’s policy is very clear: Iran has no one with immunity. All Iranians are targets for strikes. I and Prime Minister Netanyahu have authorized the Israel Defense Forces, without additional approval, to clear any Iranian senior officials whose intelligence and action chain is already closed.”

March 3, 2026, Israel’s Palmachim Air Force Base: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and Lieutenant General Eyal Zamir, Chief of the General Staff, inspect the base (Photo: Visual China)

For Netanyahu’s government, using “decapitation” of top leaders as a means to end the war has gradually become a strategy-based path dependency.

From attacks against Hamas to strikes against Hezbollah, Israel has shown through a series of targeted strike operations that removing the top command-and-control system can, to a large extent, undermine the opponent’s organizational functioning capability and produce a deterrent effect. However, in the Gaza Strip, even though such strikes are repeatedly carried out, resistance activities have not stopped, indicating clear limitations of the strategy.

When Netanyahu announced the results of the decapitation of Larijani, he emphasized that Israel “is weakening the Iranian regime” and is creating opportunities for Iran’s “regime change.” At the same time, he acknowledged that this process “is not something that can be accomplished overnight.”

These speeches that seem to celebrate victory instead reflect a deeper dilemma facing Israel’s decision-making leadership.

Strategically, Israel is not completely lacking in willingness to end hostilities. Rather, based on its assessment of the current hardline confrontation posture of Iran’s regime, it believes that any form of political compromise cannot fundamentally remove Iran’s “survival threat.” Even though “regime change,” the ultimate objective, is extremely difficult to achieve under current circumstances, Israel’s security logic forces it to continue applying pressure along the “targeted elimination” path and keep pressuring Iran’s regime.

In Netanyahu’s narrative, Iran’s nuclear program and its will to survive are placed side by side as the ultimate threats to Israel’s national security. On the one hand, Iran is seen as the backer behind armed organizations such as Hamas. On the other hand, Tehran is also viewed as determined to develop destructive weapons and committed to eliminating Israel’s core opponents. In the current regional diplomatic landscape, Iran has become the only major force in the Middle East that has not normalized relations with Israel, and the two sides have been in a long-standing hostile state.

At the ideological level, the conflict between Israel and Iran is by no means limited to a dispute over national interests; it has deepened into a profound clash of civilizations, with no feasible path for resolution within existing frameworks.

Once Israel gets the chance, it will eliminate Iran’s current regime. If it cannot defeat the regime directly, then it will eliminate the people who hold power one by one.

Assassinating Larijani can also directly push the conflict toward uncontrollability, thereby pulling the U.S. even deeper into a long-term war.

Trump’s recent shift in rhetoric constitutes the biggest threat to Netanyahu’s gamble. Although at the beginning of the war Trump issued threats about regime change against Iran’s Islamic regime, now he is deliberately downplaying that goal and instead loudly declaring “victory,” as if eager to end the military conflict.

Such a transactional political posture of taking the win and moving on is, for Netanyahu, who needs the United States to keep participating in the war, no different from pulling the rug out from under him.

Israel alone cannot completely eradicate Iran’s nuclear capability and its regional influence. As a country with a very limited territory and population base, although Israel can display astonishing military capability in short-term high-intensity conflicts, once the war turns into a war of attrition, its limited domestic manpower pool and defense-industrial production capacity will quickly fall short, and its national strength will also be unable to sustain long-term operations of the war.

The United States is unquestionably Israel’s number-one supplier of weapons and equipment, and this dependence stands out even more during wartime. Whether it is consumables like “Iron Dome” interceptors or strategic assets like F-35 fighter jets, the supply chain and technical maintenance of these are highly dependent on the United States continuously “pumping in” resources. If Trump wants to fire a shot and then leave on the Iran issue, the U.S. is very likely to use a cutoff of arms supply as a pressure tactic.

Therefore, only by continuously escalating assassination operations against Iran’s top leadership and creating a situation in which Tehran is forced into large-scale retaliation can the U.S. be made to fully abandon the idea of compromise and be firmly tied to Israel’s own war chariot.

Under this logic, eliminating an Iranian leader who can talk with the U.S. is not only a military achievement, but also a stage-by-stage victory for Israel’s strategic kidnapping of the U.S.

A U.S.-first president fighting for the Jews?

The war with Iran is becoming Trump’s biggest political crisis.

The United States is winning every battle, and Trump’s image as a “wartime president” will only shine brighter. With Larijani, a core leader of Iran, being targeted for elimination, there is no doubt that it is yet another political shot in the arm. Overall, at least in the short term, these military achievements cater to conservative voters in the United States and align with the hardline stance of pro-Israel lobbying groups.

But it seems this war cannot be stopped.

Just as Trump previously complained that he “didn’t know who to negotiate with,” this predicament has become a reality after Larijani’s death. First, it stems from the extreme uncertainty of the negotiating counterpart. With Israel’s continued assassination campaign targeting Iran’s top leadership, any potential dialogue partner could disappear at any time.

More fundamentally, any negotiations in the future that aim to end the conflict will face a structural dilemma of “no one to talk to and no one to trust”: after Larijani dies, it has become difficult to find an authoritative figure within Iran’s camp who is both acceptable to the West and capable of effectively constraining the regime’s internal diverse forces. At present, the only moderate president Pezeshkian—seemingly acceptable to the U.S. and Israel—does not have actual military power. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Guard’s trend toward radicalization means that any possible diplomatic compromise would lose the military’s recognition and legitimacy.

March 18, 2026, Tehran, Iran: People attend a funeral at Revolution Square to mourn officers who died on an Iranian warship sunk by U.S. forces, as well as Iranian security officials and military commanders killed in attacks launched by Israel (Photo: Visual China)

The biggest political crisis Trump faces from his standoff with Iran lies in the collective defection of his core base.

On March 17, Joe Kent, director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center appointed by Trump, announced his resignation, becoming the first senior official in the Trump administration to voluntarily step down because of the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Kent posted an open letter to Trump on social media, saying plainly: “I have decided to step down as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, effective immediately. I cannot, with a clear conscience, support the Iranian war that is currently taking place. Iran is not an imminent threat to our country, and it is obvious that this war was launched under pressure from Israel and its powerful pro-Israel lobbying groups in the U.S.”

For Trump, this is a dangerous political signal: a MAGA diehard who has supported Trump since 2016—someone Trump pushed through against the objections of others, personally nominated, and appointed—now undermines him in the most extreme way.

At present, MAGA’s core opinion leaders led by Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are all turning against Trump, issuing sharp criticism and accusing him of betraying the trust of his core voters.

The disappointment among MAGA voters stems from the huge gap between Trump’s campaign promises during the 2024 election and his real actions. He won votes from the MAGA group by waving the banners of “America First” and “ending endless wars,” but now he has dragged the U.S. into another long Middle East war. That stark contrast leaves his core supporters feeling completely betrayed.

A YouGov poll conducted over the past weekend shows that only one quarter of Americans support the president’s decision to take military action against Iran. For a president who is loudly opposed to useless foreign wars, opposition from within the supporters’ camp is far more damaging than attacks by Democratic leaders and mainstream media.

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—who had been seen as a real leader of the “Make America Great Again” movement—has publicly questioned Trump’s “mental state,” directly calling it a “war for Israel.” In fact, this war is reviving one of the oldest and most incendiary conspiracy theories in American politics: “the U.S. is controlled by Jewish groups.”

The real operations of the Trump administration are providing endless material for such conspiracy theories. From an operational standpoint, the core team around Trump responsible for negotiating with Iran and making war decisions is almost entirely made up of Jewish people:

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is a Jewish hedge-fund titan and is deeply involved in designing financial sanctions on Iran; Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is not only a Jewish golf buddy of Trump, but is also widely regarded as one of the key driving forces behind this military action against Iran; even more intriguingly, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. This Jewish son-in-law, who played an important role in the White House, has a private relationship with Netanyahu that has long gone beyond ordinary diplomatic boundaries.

According to media reports, during Netanyahu’s long period of working and living in the United States, he had close ties with the Kushner family, and even slept in Jared Kushner’s childhood bedroom. For MAGA voters, it is hard to describe this personnel arrangement as a coincidence.

The spread of this kind of narrative means disappointment in Trump personally is escalating into deeper suspicion: “What’s left of the ‘America First’ slogan? If the president goes to war for Jewish interests, is the U.S. still a country for the American people?”

Once, Trump’s rise to power benefited from his “outsider” identity and anti-establishment image. This anti-establishment theory he built his base on is now beginning to turn into a fatal backlash against him. When the standard-bearer of “America First” starts fighting a “war for Israel,” supporters find they exchanged their votes not for improved living conditions, but for another Middle East quagmire. That anger at being deceived then flares up from within the ranks.

When Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other once most steadfast allies begin attacking Trump with the narrative that he is “controlled by Jewish groups,” what is being shaken is not only his governing foundation, but also the very source of legitimacy for his entire political life.

In fact, the shadow of unfavorable midterm election results has already been hanging over the White House for some time, which is an undisputed fact. And more deadly than the election defeat that everyone had already anticipated is that this internal infighting is consuming the political legacy Trump values most. The once unbreakable “America First” alliance is falling apart in his hands.