Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is cleaning house after a series of intelligence failures, according to reports, after experiencing a series of assassinations, or mysterious deaths, of its officers in Iran.
These officers have become “martyrs” in the terminology of the Iranian regime.
Now, Iran’s IRGC is toppling its own in a mini-purge that could be part of rivalries, an internal coup or simply the need to get rid of the old and bring in the new.
What is the reason for these “sudden” dismissals? That was the question asked at Al-Ain media in the Gulf this week.
“A wide wave of dismissals hit the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the most prominent of which was the overthrow of the intelligence chief, Hossein Taeb, against the background of semi-official reports about the penetration and influence of the Israeli Mossad within its units,” the news outlet wrote.
Hossein Taeb was removed last week. Radio Free Europe noted that the “hard-line cleric, was the intelligence chief of Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the armed forces, for over a decade.
But in a surprise move, the IRGC announced on June 23 that it had removed Taeb from his prominent post.”
That report concludes that this is a “major shake-up in the IRGC’s intelligence apparatus comes after a series of recent incidents inside Iran, including sabotage and cyberattacks, assassinations, and the mysterious killings of IRGC members as well as scientists and engineers. Tehran has blamed some of the incidents on Israel.”
Why Hossein Taeb matters
Jason Brodsky at United Against a Nuclear Iran wrote about the controversy: “There is one man in the Iranian system who had a great deal to lose amid the multiple mysterious assassinations and explosions gripping the country.
“The now-former head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Intelligence Organization (IRGC-IO) Hossein Taeb has operated in the shadows.