ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Former Iranian foreign minister and veteran politician Kamal Kharrazi (1944-2026) succumbed to “severe injuries” he sustained in an early April US-Israeli strike that targeted his Tehran residence, Iranian state media reported on Friday.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) relayed that Kharrazi had been “martyred a few hours ago,” after being targeted by “the [Israeli] Zionist-American enemy” in an April 1 airstrike on his home in the Iranian capital. The outlet quoted Kharrazi’s relatives as confirming the news.
In a Friday post on X, Iran's First Vice President Mohammad Reza Aref mourned the slain official, describing him as a “symbol of Iran's diplomatic rationality,” and denouncing the strike that killed him as a “sign of the [US-Israeli] enemy's fear of the power of our logic and dignified diplomacy.”
Kharrazi, 81, maintained a nearly four-decade-long diplomatic career and had, since 2006, served as head of Iran's Strategic Council on Foreign Relations (SCFR) - an entity that acts as a connective body between the clerical leadership, the government, and the military in Iran.
Prior to that, he served as Iran's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York (1989-1997) and was appointed foreign minister (1997-2005) under reformist former president Mohammad Khatami.
Following his tenure as foreign minister, Kharrazi transitioned into a senior advisory role for former Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (1939-2026).
The US and Israel launched a coordinated military campaign against Iran on February 28, with the US Central Command (CENTCOM) reporting on Tuesday that the operation - dubbed Operation Epic Fury - involved strikes on more than 13,000 targets across Iran, focusing on sites deemed to “pose an imminent threat.”
Kharrazi’s death marks the latest casualty among high-ranking Iranian state and security figures, the most notable of which was the killing of Iran's former supreme leader, Khamenei, on the first day of the US-Israeli campaign.
More recent high-profile killings include the mid-March assassination of Ali Larijani (1958-2026), secretary of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the highest body responsible for Iran's foreign policy and security decisions.
Tehran confirmed Larijani’s death hours after the Israeli military reported it had “eliminated” him, along with Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij, a large volunteer paramilitary force under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).