President Ebrahim Raisi said Monday Iran will “definitely” take revenge for the spectacular assassination of a Revolutionary Guard Quds Force colonel in Tehran.
“Revenge against the criminals for the blood of the great martyr [Hassan Khodaei] will definitely be taken, without any doubt” Raisi who was speaking to reporters before leaving Tehran for Oman for an official visit said.
In lightly veiled terms, Raisi accused the United States and Israel for the assassination saying the “global arrogance” and those, who he said, had been defeated in battlefields” by defenders of Shiite holy shrines in Syria had resorted to assassinations due to their “frustration”.
Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, who Israeli media say was the acting commander of an elite Qods (Quds) Force unit, Unit 840, was shot dead behind the wheel of his unarmored Iranian-made Kia Pride by two gunmen who fled the scene on a motorbike. The colonel’s name appeared as Sayyad-Khodayari in earlier reports.
The assassination took place in front of Sayyad-Khodaei ’s home on Mojahedin-e Eslam street very close to the Iranian Parliament in central Tehran in broad daylight.
Agents and onlookers gathered around Khodaei’s house on Sunday. There is no mention of Unit 840 of Qods Force, the extraterritorial arm of the IRGC, in Iranian media.
The existence of a such a unit has only been reported by Israeli media, which in November 2020 reported that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had accused Unit 840of placing explosives on Syrian border.
IRGC Spokesman Ramezan Sharif on Monday blamed intelligence services of the “global domination system and Zionism” for the assassination which in Iranian official rhetoric refer to the United States and Israel.
Armed Forces’ Spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi said intelligence bodies are investigating the assassination and will announce its results later.
Earlier this month, Mansour Rasouli, an Iranian man who was seen in a video confessing to planning assassinations on behalf of the IRGC claimed in another video shared on social media that he was coerced by unknown people, allegedly Mossad agents, into making the confession.