Al Jazeera :
Gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire on a senior officer of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) outside his home, killing him in his car in the capital, Tehran.
Hassan Sayyad Khodayari was killed by five gunshots as he returned home near Mojahedin-e-Islam Street at about 4pm (11:30 GMT), reported the state news agency IRNA on Sunday.
The news agency published images showing a man slumped over in the driver’s seat of a vehicle, with blood around the collar of his blue shirt and on his upper right arm. The IRGC, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, identified Khodayari as a colonel.
It described him as a “defender of the sanctuary” – a term used to describe anyone who works on behalf of Iran in Syria or Iraq.
Khodayari was a member of the Quds Force, which is responsible for the IRGC’s foreign operations, and he reportedly served in Syria in past years.
Iran blamed the assassination on “elements linked to the global arrogance” – its term for the United States and its allies including Israel. The IRGC said it launched an investigation to identify the “aggressors”.
It was the most high profile killing inside Iran since the November 2020 murder of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020.
Iran will avenge the killing, President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Monday.
“I insist on the serious pursuit [of the killers] by security officials, and I have no doubt that the blood of this great martyr will be avenged,” said Raisi. “There is no doubt that the hand of global arrogance can be seen in this crime.”
Iran has been a key military backer of the Syrian regime. It has sent thousands of fighters to Syria and Iraq to fight against the ISIL (ISIS) group under the Quds Force that oversees foreign operations.
Speaking from Tehran, Abas Aslani, a senior research fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies, said “the removal of an influential IRGC figure is aimed at creating psychological operation in the country”.
“I think the timing is also very important, the government is making economic reforms that can be a potential for some protests in the country,” Aslani told Al Jazeera.
At least six Iranian scientists and academics have been killed or attacked since 2010, several by assailants riding motorcycles, in incidents believed to have targeted Iran’s nuclear programme, which the West says is aimed at producing a bomb.
Iran denies this saying its nuclear programme has peaceful purposes, and has denounced the killings of its scientists as acts of “terrorism” carried out by Western intelligence agencies and the Israeli Mossad. Israel has declined to comment on such accusations.
“This is not the first time that assassination has taken place in Tehran. There have been examples in the past. And most of the time the Israelis and Americans have been at fault,” Aslani from the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies, said.
