From the Liveblog of
Thursday, June 19, 2025
IDF’s intelligence chief says Israel must ‘hunt down’ Iran’s fleeing military commanders
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleEmanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The chief of the Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Shlomi Binder, says the IDF must “hunt down” Iran’s military commanders, “wherever they flee.”
Speaking to soldiers at one of the directorate’s command centers, Binder describes the elimination of Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, Iran’s most senior military commander, earlier this week.
“Two days ago, we managed to strike one of their secret headquarters in the mountains. Some of the commanders managed to escape to another location. Twelve hours later, we struck the chief of staff of Khatam al-Anbiya, who had fled to another mountainous area near Tehran,” Binder says.
“We have to hunt them down wherever they flee. And you’re succeeding in turning Iran from some distant place, 1,500 kilometers away, into a military we know how to deal with as if it were in our first circle. You’ve turned the third circle into the first circle,” he says.
Binder says that in the IDF’s opening strikes early Friday, 30 Iranian commanders were killed. The IDF named eight top generals killed that morning, and said that the strikes killed dozens of commanders and at least nine nuclear scientists.
The Times of Israel Community.