(Tehran) The Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, reported on Sunday the “assassination” of one of their colonels in the east of the capital, an unprecedented announcement since that of the murder in November 2020 of a nuclear physicist attributed by Tehran to Israel.
Posted yesterday at 10:51 p.m.
“Colonel Sayyad Khodai, a defender of the shrine, was assassinated in an armed attack by two motorcyclists on Mojahedin-e Eslam Street in Tehran,” the Guardians said in a statement posted on their official website.
The term “sanctuary defender” refers to anyone working on behalf of the Islamic Republic in Syria and Iraq, two countries with Shia places of worship, where Iran exerts influence and claims to be present through what he presents as “military advisers”.
State television clarified without further details that Colonel Khodai was “known in Syria”, a country at war since 2011.
In their press release, the Guardians denounced a “terrorist act” committed by “elements linked to global arrogance” (the United States and its allies, in the official phraseology of the Islamic Republic, editor’s note).
“This inhuman crime was perpetrated by terrorist elements affiliated with global arrogance”, also denounced the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Said Khatibzadeh, condemning the “silence of countries which claim to be fighting against terrorism”.
Sayyad Khodai was shot five times in the attack, which occurred around 4 p.m. (11:30 GMT), as he was returning home, according to the official Irna news agency.
Irna posted photos showing a man covered in blood sitting in the driver’s seat of a car whose windows had been smashed.
The Tasnim news agency for its part specified that Khodaï was “close to his home” when he was killed and that “his wife was the first person to discover the body”.
“Rogue network”
The Fars news agency indicated that the Tehran prosecutor “appeared in person at the scene” of the facts, and ordered to “accelerate the identification and arrest of the perpetrators of this criminal act”.
Earlier in the day, the Guardians announced the arrest of a “network of thugs linked to the intelligence service of the Zionist regime” (Israel, editor’s note).
The network is involved in “thefts, damage to private and public property, kidnappings and obtaining false confessions”, charged the Guardians.
Colonel Khodai is the most important figure whose murder on Iranian soil has been announced by Tehran since that of nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, killed in November 2020 near the capital in an attack on his convoy.
Fakhrizadeh was presented after his death as a Deputy Minister of Defense and the head of the Defense Research and Innovation Organization (Sépand), having notably contributed to the “anti-atomic defense” of the country.
Iran accuses Israel, its sworn enemy, of having ordered the attack.
This event is reminiscent of General Qassem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, the external operations branch of the Revolutionary Guards, who was killed in an American drone attack in Baghdad in January 2020.
Khodai’s assassination comes as Iran has been engaged for more than a year in negotiations with world powers to revive an international agreement concluded in 2015 to frame its nuclear program, but from which Washington unilaterally withdrew in 2018 .
Negotiations have been stalled for two months even though a draft text seemed within reach of signature.
One of the final obstacles is indeed Tehran’s demand that the US remove the Revolutionary Guards from the US blacklist of “foreign terrorist organizations”.