Iran's top security official, Ali Larijani, on Wednesday claimed that more than 500 American soldiers have been killed in the ongoing war that erupted on Saturday.
In a post on X, Larijani said US President Donald Trump had been swayed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “clownish antics,” accusing him of “dragging the American people into an unjust war with Iran.”
“Now he must calculate — with over 500 American soldiers killed in just the past few days, does America still come first — or Israel,” he wrote.
The Pentagon has announced the deaths of only six US servicemen since Saturday, four of them in Kuwait.
Larijani, who previously served as a senior adviser to Khamenei and currently heads Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, warned in a cryptic message that the “story continues.”
“The martyrdom of Imam Khamenei will exact a heavy price from you. God willing,” he said.
His remarks came as fighting between Iran and the United States continues to intensify.
The war began with a joint American-Israeli attack on Iran on Saturday, which led to the killing of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, along with several high-ranking military commanders who had assumed office following the killing of their predecessors by Israel in the June 2025 war.
Nearly 1,050 Iranians have been killed in the four days of fighting so far, according to government estimates, including 165 schoolchildren in the southern Iranian city of Minab, which sparked widespread outrage.
Khamenei was targeted at his residence in downtown Tehran along with members of his family, including his wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, son-in-law and grandchildren.
The Iranian leadership has vowed strong revenge for Khamenei’s killing, launching missile and drone strikes on Israel and American military bases across the Middle East.
In a statement on Monday, Larijani said Iran has “prepared itself for a long war.”
He also rejected the offer of negotiations with the US as proposed by the Omani foreign minister Badr Al Busaidi, who mediated the recent indirect nuclear talks between the two sides before the war broke out.
