Videos confirm the destruction of a residential building in Pardis during Tuesday's airstrikes, prompting IRGC-affiliated media to issue and subsequently retract reports of Ali Larijani's death at the location.
Videos circulating on social media show the total destruction of a building in Phase 2 of Pardis, Tehran province, following overnight aerial bombardments. According to the citizen journalist aggregator Vahid Online, the received footage captures the ruins of buildings destroyed in airstrikes around 3:00 AM on Tuesday, March 17.
The aftermath of the strike generated rapidly shifting state media narratives regarding Ali Larijani, the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who was reportedly targeted during the broader US-Israeli military campaign that began earlier in the week. The exiled opposition network Iran International reported that Fars News Agency, an outlet closely affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), initially published specific details of Larijani's death at the site. The Fars report claimed that Larijani, along with his son, a deputy, and a group of bodyguards, was targeted by fighter jets and killed at his daughter's house in the Pardis area.
State authorities subsequently retracted this specific narrative. According to Iran International, the Supreme National Security Council's secretariat quickly issued a statement declaring the Fars News report regarding the "details of the location of Ali Larijani's death" to be false. Vahid Online corroborated the reversal, noting that Fars later updated its coverage to state that the initial news report "was a mistake."
Sources focus specifically on the retraction regarding the location and details of Larijani's death in Pardis, leaving his actual status unconfirmed by the state following the broader wave of airstrikes mentioned in the background context.