But on Saturday local time, he attended the funeral procession, wearing a black suit and shirt, and struggling to walk while clutching a cane. He appeared visibly weak, his face thinner, and his back and shoulders hunched over.
Israel launched the military strike on Iran, it said, to target its nuclear facilities, missile factories, fuel depots and gas refineries. The strikes also hit residential apartment buildings where, it said, military commanders and nuclear scientists lived.
Iran has said that the strikes killed at least 935 people, including 132 women and 38 children. The Iranian Government has also said that 30 commanders and military personnel were killed.
Shamkhani, 69, is one of Iran’s most influential political figures.
He had supervised negotiations with the United States over Iran’s nuclear programme before talks collapsed.
He had served for years as secretary of the country’s Supreme National Security Council and, most recently, had been appointed as a senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
An ethnic Arab from Khuzestan province who is fluent in Arabic, the admiral acted as the ayatollah’s point man for restoring diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia after years of broken ties.
Khamenei had given Shamkhani the responsibility for overseeing a committee that was guiding the nuclear negotiations with Washington.
Israel launched the attack in June, it said, to stop Iran’s advancing nuclear programme from building weapons.
The US later joined the strikes in June, using submarine missiles and B-2 bombers carrying “bunker-busting” bombs to target three nuclear sites: Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog has said that it had no evidence that Iran was building a bomb but that the country was stockpiling 400kg of highly enriched uranium, which could enable the Government to build 10 bombs. Iran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes.
In an interview with Iranian state television, Shamkhani said he had been lying in bed and his wife had been sleeping in a separate room at the time of the attack.
He said one son who lived with them had left the house 10 minutes before. After the strike, he said, his room was reduced to rubble.
“I first thought there was an earthquake — the rubble fell on top of me,” Shamkhani said in the TV interview. When he heard a car pass, he realised it could not have been an earthquake.
“I said to myself, ‘OK, the Israelis hit me,’” he said. He described losing oxygen under the rubble and having difficulty breathing.
He was stuck under the rubble for three hours, Shamkhani said. He prayed and kept shouting the names of his wife and son, he said.
Rescue teams eventually heard him, and as they dug through the rubble, he said, they spotted his feet first before uncovering his whole body. In the interview he did not address if his wife had been injured.
Shamkhani said he had sustained serious injuries, including internal injuries, damage to his hearing and broken chest bones.
During the TV interview, his voice sounded raspy and his speech was slow. At times, it appeared as if he was struggling to finish his sentences.
At the start of the televised interview, he breathed through an incentive spirometer, a medical device typically used to exercise the lungs after a surgery or an injury to the chest.
He said that he knew why Israel had targeted him but could not say it publicly. He also claimed that he had played a role in “making Israel miserable”.
Shamkhani said that the chain of senior military commanders Israel killed in June had all been close friends with whom he had planned strategy.
He also said that the nuclear negotiations with the US had been “trick negotiations” to lay the ground for attacking Iran.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Farnaz Fassihi
Photographs by: Arash Khamooshi
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
