An Iranian Revolutionary Guards colonel on Sunday was shot dead outside his Tehran home, the Guards said, blaming his “assassination” on assailants linked to the US and its allies.
The killing of Colonel Sayyad Khodai is the most high-profile murder inside Iran since the November 2020 killing of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Iran had accused Israel of masterminding the attack on Fakhrizadeh’s convoy near Tehran, and later identified him as a deputy defense minister.
Photo: EPA-EFE / Iranian Revolutionary Guards
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on Sunday said that “elements linked to global arrogance” — a reference to the US and its allies, including Israel — were responsible for the “terrorist act” that claimed Khodai’s life.
In a statement posted on its Web site, the Guards said Khodai “was assassinated in an armed attack carried out by two motorcyclists on Mojahedin-e Eslam street in Tehran,” outside his home.
The Guards — the ideological arm of Iran’s military — described Khodai as a “defender of the sanctuary,” a term used for anyone who works on behalf of the Islamic republic in Syria or Iraq.
Iran wields considerable influence in Iraq, home to key Shiite holy shrines, where it says it has “military advisers” tasked with training foreign “volunteers.”
Revered general Qassem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Revolutionary Guards, was killed in a US drone attack in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in January 2020.
The Islamic republic is also a major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has backed his government in that nation’s 11-year civil war. Tehran says it has deployed forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus, but only as advisers.
State television said that Khodai was “well-known” in Syria, without elaborating.
The official news agency IRNA said that Khodai was killed by five bullets as he returned home at about 4pm.
The agency published pictures showing a man slumped over in the driver’s seat of a white vehicle, with blood around the collar of his blue shirt and on his right upper arm.
He was strapped in with his seat belt and the front window on the passenger side had been shot out.
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh deplored the killing of Khodai.
“This inhuman crime was perpetrated by terrorist elements linked to global arrogance,” he said in a statement, denouncing “the silence of countries that pretend to fight against terrorism.”
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