Ali Larijani | Pakistan

Veteran Iranian politician Ali Larijani was one of the most powerful figures in the Islamic republic, an architect of its security policy, and a close adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei until the supreme leader’s assassination in an airstrike last month. Larijani, 67, was assassinated by a US-Israeli air attack as he was visiting his daughter in the eastern outskirts of a Tehran suburb, Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency said on Tuesday. The scion of a leading clerical family with brothers who ​rose to high positions after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Larijani was seen as canny and pragmatic but always fiercely determined to uphold Iran’s theocratic system of government. A Revolutionary Guard Corps commander during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, he became head of Iran’s ‌national broadcaster before stints running the Supreme National Security Council either side of his membership of parliament, where he was speaker for 12 years. His role as the ultimate insider in Ali Khamenei’s Iran gave him responsibilit...

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Iran, Mudassir Tipu, has confirmed that Iran’s National Security Adviser and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, is visiting Pakistan as part of ongoing high-level engagement between the two neighbouring countries.