The Fars news agency on Sunday disclosed new details of an assassination attempt that targeted a high-level meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council attended by heads of the three government branches and high-ranking officials during the 12-day war between Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Iran has launched a comprehensive investigation into the assassination attempt, and there is suspicion that an agent was involved, informed sources told the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated news agency.
Fars said that in the attack, “some officials, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, suffered minor injuries to their legs while leaving the meeting,” and added that they escaped through “an emergency hatch that had been planned in advance.”
The speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, and the head of the judiciary, Gholam-Hossein Mohseni Ejei, were also said to have been in the meeting.
According to Fars, the attack occurred on Monday, June 16, at the lower levels of a secure government facility in western Tehran.
Fars said the attack was modeled after an Israeli plan to assassinate Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, involving the launch of six bombs or missiles aimed at entry and exit points to block evacuation routes and disrupt ventilation.
Following the explosions, power was cut to the targeted floor. However, Iranian officials reportedly managed to escape through a pre-designated emergency hatch.
In an interview last week with Tucker Carlson, the political commentator, Pezeshkian accused Israel of trying to assassinate him but did not admit to having being injured. “They did try, yes... They acted accordingly, but they failed,” he said.
Hours after the Fars news agency published its report, a spokesman of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council told the Nour News agency that “the Israeli attack on a secret meeting of the Council at a highly protected site, attended by heads of authorities and senior military and political leaders, set a dangerous precedent and sounded the alarm about the possibility of a security breach and the need to strengthen protection at the highest levels.”
“The attack is a dangerous threat to Iran not only in its timing and location, but also in the fact that it targeted one of the most secret and important meetings of the Iranian state,” the news agency wrote.
Vahid Jalili, the chief for cultural affairs and policy evolution at the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) and the brother of Saeed Jalili, Khamenei’s representative in the Supreme National Security Council, was the first to speak about the attack.
He said the meeting of heads of the government branches on June16 was targeted by Israeli attacks just hours before the missile strike on the broadcasting building.
In a related development, the wife of Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Iran during the 12-day war, said her husband received a phone call from his workplace, and headed there before he was killed.
In an interview with the Jamaran website, affiliated to the Khomeini Foundation, she said “Amir returned home from a ceremony, slept for about half an hour, before receiving the phone call.”
She added, “Our house was attacked after the dawn prayer.”
