A colonel for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards was killed on Sunday in Tehran – right outside his own home.
Less than 20 minutes ago
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Hassan Sayad Khodayari was sitting in the driver’s seat of his car when he was killed in broad daylight.
Khodayari was a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC). On Sunday, he was shot five times by two armed men on a motorcycle, according to the state-run Iranian news agency IRNA.
The killing took place outside Khodayari’s own home, near the parliament in Tehran.
The renowned colonel is described as a “defender of the sanctuary”, a reference to Iranians who fought against IS in Syria and Iraq under an elite force known as Quds. Iran has been a key military supporter of the Syrian regime.
The colonel has kept a very low profile, and there is little information about him.
But in general, Quds officers tend to be shadow figures who carry out secret military missions, including for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, writes AP.
It is unknown who is behind the attack, but the Revolutionary Guards point in a statement to “elements associated with global arrogance”. The term is a typical reference to the United States, Israel, and their allies, writes AP.
Security forces are now hunting for the person or persons behind it.
The assassination of Colonel Khodayari is the most high-profile assassination attempt the Iranian authorities have reported since 2020. At that time, Israel accused of killing Mohsen Fakhrizadehwho was described as one of the main architects behind Iran’s nuclear program.
He was killed in an assassination attempt outside Tehran when armed men attacked his car.
–About the same time as the Iranian colonel was killed on Sunday, Iranian media reported that the Revolutionary Guards’ security forces had uncovered and arrested members of an Israeli intelligence network operating in the country. They did not elaborate on whether this had any connection to the murder of Khodayari.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz The colonel was suspected of being behind plans to attack Israeli businessmen and diplomats abroad.
The Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards overlooks foreign operations, and has been subjected to repeated Israeli airstrikes in Syria. In March, two soldiers were killed near Damascus by Israeli forces. In return, Iran fired rockets into northern Iraq, writes Al Jazeera.
In January 2020, General Quds General Qasem Soleimani was also killed during a US air strike in Iraq. The White House and the Pentagon confirmed the killing of Soleimani, saying the attack was carried out to ward off future Iranian attacks.
–Attacks on scientists
At least six Iranian researchers and academics have been killed or attacked since 2010, several of them by being shot by motorcyclists, Al Jazeera writes.
The killings are believed to be motivated by Iran’s nuclear program, which according to the West aims to produce a bomb. Iranian authorities deny that this is the case, saying that the nuclear program has peaceful purposes. They have condemned the killings of their researchers as terrorist acts “carried out by Western and Israeli intelligence agencies”.
– This is not the first time an assassination attempt has taken place in Tehran. There have been examples in the past. “Most of the time, Israelis and Americans have been wrong,” Abas Aslani, a senior researcher at the Center for Strategic Studies in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera.
Israel has declined to comment on the allegations.
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