Wounded Iranian president forced to escape through emergency hatch during Israeli air strike
Iran’s president was injured in an Israeli air strike targeting a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council, Tehran has revealed.
Masoud Pezeshkian was wounded in the leg and forced to escape through an emergency hatch after Israel struck the meeting in Tehran with six missiles during the 12-day war in June.
The revelation, by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-affiliated Fars news agency, confirmed claims made by Mr Pezeshkian during a recent interview that Israel had tried to assassinate him.
According to Fars, Mr Pezeshkian, 70, sustained an injury in the strike on June 16. Others in attendance at the meeting included Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the parliamentary speaker, and Mohseni Ejei, a judiciary chief.
The agency said the attack bore similarities to the strike that killed Hassan Nasrallah, the long-term leader of Hezbollah, in Beirut.
“The attack occurred before noon on Monday, June 16, while a meeting of the Supreme National Security Council was being held with the heads of the three branches of government and other senior officials in the lower floors of a building in western Tehran,” said the report.
“The attackers targeted the building’s entrances and exits by firing six bombs or missiles to block escape routes and cut off air flow.”
A building used by Iran’s state TV broadcaster was also struck on June 16 - Getty Images
Fars reported that others were also injured in the attack. It stated that “some officials, including the president, suffered minor injuries to their legs while leaving”, and added that they escaped through “an emergency hatch that had been planned in advance”.
It added: “After the explosions, the electricity on the floor was cut off.”
Investigations are now under way to find a possible insider because of the precise nature of the attack.
Iran has arrested more than 700 people in the wake of the war on charges of collaborating with Israel, and has attempted to push through a new emergency spy law that aims to impose harsher penalties, including the death penalty.
Alhough Fars did not detail the location of the strike, Iran International, an opposition outlet, reported an Israeli air strike against an area near Shahrak-e-Gharb, in western Tehran, on June 16.
Mohsen Rezaei, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general, also told state TV that Israel “struck six points at the location where the Supreme National Security Council was meeting, but not the slightest harm was done to any of its members”.
But in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the political commentator, Mr 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.
The interview drew major criticism from MPs in Iran, with 24 joining in a public letter accusing the president of undermining national security.
They said his openness to renewed negotiations with the US in spite of the American strikes on three key nuclear facilities, and his willingness to co-operate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has since been expelled from the country, showed weakness.
“From a national security standpoint, such messaging risks inviting further aggression,” the MPs wrote.
“If before June 12 there were diverse views on resisting American overreach, this war generated rare unity around the necessity of confronting the United States and its proxy, the Zionist regime.”