Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed on Sunday that Israel killed the head of the intelligence section of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mohamed Kazemi, and his deputy, Hassan Mohaqeq.
"I can tell you that just a few moments ago we caught his intelligence chief and his deputy in Tehran," he said in an interview with the American network Fox News.
Iran's London-based Iran International television had previously reported that Kazemi and Mohaqeq had been buried following an Israeli attack on the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard Intelligence or Pasdaran in Tehran.
In the interview, Netanyahu again mentioned the alleged attempts by Iranian secret services to assassinate US President Donald Trump:"He is enemy number one, a determined leader."
Trump “never took the path that others have taken and tried to negotiate from weakness, giving them a path to enrich uranium, which means a path to the bomb, giving them billions and billions of dollars,” he said.
Netanyahu asserted that"they've also tried to kill me, but I'm just their junior partner." "They know that Trump is a major threat to Iran's plans to weaponize and use nuclear weapons," he said.
In fact, he thanked Trump for “supporting good against evil” and justified the attacks on Iran because “we're not going to have another Holocaust.”
"We have obviously informed our American friends and President Trump, our great friend, in advance (...). We are fully coordinated," he stressed.
Netanyahu also defended Trump's"brilliant" plan to rebuild Gaza by giving the population the option to leave and rejected Israel's plan to starve the population or completely destroy the buildings. He argued that"we place supercharges (explosives) to detonate all the booby traps, and that's why the buildings are destroyed." "They blow up the tunnels under the buildings, and they collapse," he explained.
Following the Prime Minister's announcement, and within the framework of Operation Rising Lion, the Israeli army has killed more than 20 Iranian commanders , including key officials of the Tehran regime's intelligence and missile apparatus.
"Since the start of the operation (on Friday), more than 20 commanders of the Iranian regime's security apparatus have been eliminated," the military said in a statement, naming several senior commanders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the armed forces.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Since 2009, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps—known as Pasdaran or IRGC—has consolidated a parallel and even dominant intelligence structure vis-à-vis the Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS), assuming broad national security capabilities. Emerging from the Green Movement protests, IRGC Intelligence (IRGC-IO) was created directly by the Supreme Leader to neutralize Western infiltrations and stifle internal dissent. In contrast to the more professional MOIS, the IRGC-IO is characterized by an ideological bias and a conspiratorial culture, prioritizing ideological loyalty over technical capability.
In its operational arena, the IRGC-IO carries out relentless persecution of journalists, activists, intellectuals, and dissidents, both inside and outside Iran. Documented practices include mass surveillance, arbitrary arrests, torture within facilities such as Evin Prison, and transnational kidnapping operations—such as the case of journalist Ruhollah Zam in 2019. Furthermore, its cyber arm, Cyber Command, uses hired hackers to hack into the accounts of opponents and disseminate official propaganda, and is subject to international sanctions.
Externally, the Quds Force—a subdivision of IRGC Intelligence—has consolidated a network of espionage and covert actions in the Middle East and the West. This force operates similarly to a militarized CIA, financing and coordinating militias in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran itself, as well as participating in targeted assassinations and attacks. They operate in tandem with the IRGC-IO, sharing logistics and intelligence, but maintaining separate structures to diversify control and deepen their institutional autonomy.
