Following the killing of an Iranian IRGC commander named Hassan Sayad Khodaei in Tehran, the media highlighted his role in terrorist attacks against Israel and dubbed him the deputy commander of a unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force with missions solely focused on targeting Israeli interests and citizens.
The Quds Force is the IRGC’s extraterritorial operations arm, involved in funding, arming, and training militias across the Middle East and assassinating dissidents, opposition groups, and anyone the Islamic Republic of Iran deems an enemy.
The senior member of the IRGC’s Quds Force was involved in planning attacks against Israeli citizens and interests in various countries, including Cyprus, Turkey, Colombia, as well as Africa, and had been a target for months.
Iranian media reported on Sunday evening, May 22, that a Revolutionary Guards commander had been shot five times by gunmen.
The name of this person was first reported as “Sayad Khodayari” and later “Hassan Sayad Khodaei”.
In a statement, the IRGC attributed the killing to “counter-revolutionary and global arrogance” groups, which could refer to countries such as Israel.
The IRGC also named the victim as one of the “defenders of the shrine”; A term used for members of the Quds Force and IRGC militias in Syria and Iraq, involved in defending the Assad regime in Syria and exporting the Islamic Republic’s ideology at the cost of millions of human lives.
The name of the 840th Quds Force Unit has been repeated several times in the news in the last year and a half.
For the first time in the October of 2020, the Israeli army announced the existence of this unit and announced that the responsibility of this unit is “planning and providing assassination arrangements outside Iran.”
In recent years, the killing of several other members of the IRGC, specifically those involved with Iran’s nuclear program, has been attributed to Israel.
The killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the Deputy Minister of Defense and one of the people involved in the nuclear and missile programs of the Islamic Republic, in November 2020 was one of these cases.
Some attacks and explosions at the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities have also been attributed to Israel.
The killing of Sayad Khodaei in Tehran coincided with the release of a statement by the IRGC announcing the arrest of members of a network that allegedly “kidnapped and obtained fabricated confessions” under the leadership of Mossad.