Israel Defense Forces targeted a top Iranian official and a Hamas commander in separate airstrikes in the Middle East overnight.
Hamas commander Yahya Abu Labda was reportedly killed during an IDF airstrike in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, according to the Times of Israel. Esmaeil Khatib, Iran’s intelligence minister, was targeted in a strike conducted by the IDF in Tehran, Iran. It is currently unknown if Khatib had survived the strike as multiple reports provided conflicting information about his status. The strikes come a day after Israel killed Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s National Security Council.
Abu Labda was a prominent figure in development of Hamas’s precision missile project, according to the Times of Israel. He was a commander of the organization’s supply and logistics department and tasked with the “procurement and transport of military equipment and weapons.”
“Abu Labda led and advanced the transfer of dozens of tons of raw materials for rocket production and advanced electronic components to support Hamas’s manufacturing enterprise,” said the IDF.
Khatib has been Iran’s intelligence minister since August 2021, according to the Jerusalem Post. He was an integral member of Iran’s government leadership who spent many years in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s intelligence unit. He was reportedly a valued member of the government by former Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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Khatib was also on the radar of U.S. government officials for years. In 2022, he was one of the Iranian officials sanctioned by the Treasury Department on the basis of “engaging in malicious cyber activities” and as a “human rights offender.” Under Khatib’s leadership, Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security initiated crackdowns against “activists, journalists, and members of religious minority communities,” according to the nonprofit and non-partisan policy group, United Against Nuclear Iran.
Khatib previously accused Israel of committing war crimes and genocide in Gaza and blamed the U.S. for “bloodshed in the Gaza Strip” and said the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel were a setback for the U.S. in the region, asserting that “the U.S. dominance, previously asserting military, intelligence, economic, and political support for the Zionist regime, has collapsed.”