The Israel Defense Forces killed Iran’s intelligence minister, Esmaeil Khatib, in an overnight airstrike on Tehran, Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday, adding that “significant surprises” were expected later in the day.

Khatib was the third senior Iranian official slain within 24 hours.

“On this day, significant surprises are expected across all arenas that will escalate the war we are conducting against Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon,” Katz said during a security assessment, in remarks provided by his office.

“The intensity of the strikes in Iran is increasing. The Iranian intelligence minister Khatib was also eliminated overnight,” he said.

Hours later, Israel attacked Iran’s largest gas-processing facility, in the Bushehr Province.

Katz said that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “authorized the IDF to [eliminate] any senior Iranian figure… without the need for additional approval.”

Khatib, who had served as intelligence minister since 2021, was targeted by Israeli Air Force fighter jets in the capital, Tehran.

The military said the Intelligence Ministry is “the Iranian terrorist regime’s primary intelligence organization, which also played a key role in supporting the regime’s repression and terrorist activities.”

The ministry “possesses advanced intelligence capabilities, overseeing surveillance, espionage, and the execution of covert operations worldwide, particularly against the State of Israel and Iranian citizens,” the IDF said.

As intelligence minister, the IDF said, Khatib “played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, both with regards to the arrests and killing of protesters, as well as shaping the regime’s intelligence assessment,” and during protests in 2022-2023 over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, in police custody.

The IDF said Khatib also led the ministry’s “terror activities against Israeli and American targets around the world, as well as activities directed against targets within Israel” during the current war.

On Tuesday, Israel announced it had killed Ali Larijani, a top security official believed by some to be running Iran amid the war, and Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ volunteer Basij militia.

Throughout the war, Israel has been using targeted airstrikes and loitering drones to hunt and kill officers of the Iranian regime’s internal security forces, chasing them from headquarters to backup locations and even to tents and buses on the side of the road, The Wall Street Journal reported early Wednesday.

Soleimani was killed in a tent in a wooded area of Tehran, where he’d withdrawn with his deputies after Israel bombed the Basij headquarters and other official gathering places. An ordinary Iranian had tipped off Israeli intelligence about the commander’s location, the report said.

According to the article, after the US-Israeli strikes on February 28 that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei and dozens of other high-ranking Iranians, starting the war, the IDF followed intelligence that security forces planned to use sports arenas as mustering points. After watching the sites fill up, Israel struck the stadiums, killing hundreds of members of the security services and military.

That the stadiums — in particular Azadi Stadium, in Tehran — were struck was widely reported at the time, but their use as gathering points for security officers was not known. Regime officials condemned the strikes as attacks on civilian targets, without acknowledging their use.

Israeli intelligence officials have also been calling individual police commanders, warning them to stand down in the case of a civilian uprising. The Journal said it reviewed the contents of one call in which a Mossad agent warned a senior police commander, in Persian: “We know everything about you.” The policeman reportedly said: “I’m a dead man already. Just please come help us.”

According to the report, Iranians have reported a sense of disorder taking hold, with police unable to carry out some of their regular duties, and advising shopkeepers to close up at night and leaving previous investigations on hold.

Some security officers, afraid for their safety, have started sleeping in mosques, vehicles, or tents. Some have pleaded with residents to let them sleep inside apartment buildings, or have set themselves up in stairwells, prompting the residents to evacuate for fear of an Israeli strike, the report said.

According to the newspaper, Israel aims not only to disrupt the command and control of the agencies and degrade their enforcement abilities, but also to show Iranian civilians that agents of the regime are under attack.

Drones hovering in Tehran, taking out checkpoints

Over the past week, the Israeli Air Force has been striking members of Iran’s oppressive Basij paramilitary force and its checkpoints across Tehran and elsewhere. The Journal reported that the IAF had sent “fleets of loitering drones” to carry out the strikes.

On Thursday alone, the IDF said it struck Basij soldiers at more than 10 checkpoints and positions in Tehran.

לאחר חיסולו של מפקד יחידת הבסיג': חיל-האוויר תוקף בשעות האחרונות חיילים ועמדות של יחידת הבסיג' שנפרסו ברחבי טהרן pic.twitter.com/8fX2P0RyJ5 — Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) March 17, 2026

לאחר חיסולו של מפקד יחידת הבסיג': חיל-האוויר תוקף בשעות האחרונות חיילים ועמדות של יחידת הבסיג' שנפרסו ברחבי טהרן pic.twitter.com/8fX2P0RyJ5

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) March 17, 2026

The military said one target was an “emergency position” of the Basij and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, “which had previously served as a football club.”

A source in Tehran told the Journal that police moved another checkpoint in the city’s Vanak neighborhood under a highway bridge to avoid being struck. The report said that much of the intelligence about roadside targets has come via tips from ordinary Iranians.

The IDF said the strikes were “inflicting deep and ongoing blows to the capabilities of the Basij unit.”

Last week, the IDF also said it had struck members of the Basij force at checkpoints in Tehran.

Though the US and Israel have said that only Iranians themselves can topple the Islamic Republic, both countries have spoken of creating the conditions for a popular uprising.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Iranians to challenge the Islamic Republic during the holiday of Nowruz, saying Israel was “watching from above.” The remark came despite another report that Israeli officials had warned last week that, as things stood, Iranians would be “slaughtered” if they took to the streets.

The US and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran on February 28 after a massive US military buildup in the region and repeated threats by US President Donald Trump to strike Iran, first over its crackdown on anti-regime protesters in January and then over its nuclear program. Iran has responded to the bombing with missile and drone strikes across the region.

It’s unclear how many people were killed in Iran’s brutal crackdown, with estimates from human rights and opposition groups running at between 7,000 and 36,000 people killed, mostly protesters.

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