The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps spent the weekend spreading lies about Benjamin Netanyahu’s death while simultaneously threatening to finish the job for real. The IRGC’s mouthpiece, Sepah News, published a statement Sunday declaring that Iranian forces “will continue to pursue and kill” the Israeli prime minister “with full force” — then hedged with the darkly absurd qualifier: “if this child-killing criminal is alive.”

The question hanging over the Middle East is whether Iran’s escalating threats and propaganda campaign reflect genuine military confidence — or the desperation of a regime that assassinated its own Supreme Leader’s successor narrative along with Ali Khamenei himself on Feb. 28.

The IRGC’s disinformation operation has been running in parallel with its military campaign. Last week, the Tasnim News Agency — also IRGC-linked — published a piece legitimizing social media rumors that Netanyahu had already been killed in an Iranian strike. The article listed five supposed “indicators” of Netanyahu’s “possible death or injury,” including the cancelled trip to Israel by White House envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and France’s failure to specify the exact timing of a Macron-Netanyahu phone call. Tasnim treated these diplomatic footnotes as proof of a cover-up. “These speculations have yet to be officially confirmed or denied,” the agency wrote — a formulation designed to keep a false story alive without the burden of evidence.

Iranian media also circulated claims that National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) was killed in a missile strike, and that Netanyahu’s brother was either injured or dead. None of it was true.

The IRGC claimed Sunday that it has carried out more than 50 retaliatory attacks against the United States and Israel using missiles and drones, and promised that “continuous and crushing attacks will continue with power and more extensively until the aggressor surrenders.” It also claimed a heavy missile strike had damaged industrial sectors of Tel Aviv. The Tasnim News Agency separately reported that a U.S.-Israeli strike hit Shiraz in southern Iran early Sunday, destroying residential units and wounding civilians — framing Iran as victim while its forces target Israeli cities.

On Tuesday, Ali Larijani, head of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, posted a thinly veiled threat against President Donald Trump’s life on X. “Iran doesn’t fear your empty threats,” Larijani wrote. “Even those bigger than you couldn’t eliminate Iran. Be careful not to get eliminated yourself.”

The post came in direct response to Trump’s message on Truth Social warning that if Iran does not allow oil shipments to resume through the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. would hit Iran “twenty times harder” than it has been hit so far. “Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back,” Trump wrote, adding that he prayed it would not come to that.

Larijani has been central to Iran’s military response since the joint U.S.-Israeli campaign began, leading the retaliatory strikes that have struck Israel and sent ripples across the Gulf. Following Khamenei’s death on Feb. 28, Larijani went on national television and vowed to hold Trump personally responsible.

That threat sits in a long pattern. The United States has accused Iran of multiple attempts on Trump’s life in recent years — all denied by Tehran. Last Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed that a U.S. military strike in Iran killed the leader of a covert Iranian unit that had been planning to assassinate Trump. “Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh,” Hegseth said.

On Friday, a jury in New York convicted a Pakistani man who tried to hire hit men on behalf of the IRGC to carry out political assassinations inside the United States. Among the targets: Trump, former President Joe Biden, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley. In 2024, the Justice Department unsealed a criminal complaint against an Afghan man allegedly approached by the IRGC and given seven days to put together a plan to surveil and kill Trump.

Trump’s security apparatus has treated the Iranian threat as real and ongoing. After the second assassination attempt against Trump in Florida in 2024 — unrelated to Iran — his detail was sufficiently alarmed by the Iranian threat that Trump was transported to a public event on a decoy plane owned by Steve Witkoff, according to Axios.

Trump himself has left no ambiguity about what an Iranian assassination attempt would trigger. “I’ve left instructions if they do it, they get obliterated, there won’t be anything left,” he said last year.