A senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps was assassinated in Tehran on Sunday outside his home, according to a Guards statement.
The statement identified the man as Colonel Sayad Khodayee and said he had fought for years in Syria as part of Iran’s military deployment to “defend the temple” – a term Iran uses to to justify its presence in the war in Syria and to identify these people. fight for the Islamic State. The statement blamed the assassination on foreign “terrorists” affiliated with world powers seen as enemies of Iran’s Islamic revolution.
State media reported that two assassins on motorbikes approached Colonel Khodayee’s car and fired five shots. The photos show a man in the driver’s seat wearing a seat belt, bleeding from a gunshot wound and behind the wheel in an Iranian-made Kia Pride. Reports say his wife was the first to find his body.
State media reported that security forces were hunting for the assassins who had escaped. The Tehran prosecutor arrived at the scene shortly after the attack. According to the Associated Press, the killing took place in broad daylight on a secure street near Iran’s parliament.
The assassination comes at a time when the Iran nuclear deal is at an impasse because the United States has designated the Guards Corps as a terrorist group. Iran has requested the removal of the terrorist designation as a condition of restoring the deal, and Washington has so far refused.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the murder. But its style echoes previous attacks in Iran by Israel.
In November 2020, a top Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakrizadeh, was assassinated while traveling in a car outside Tehran. A US official and two other intelligence officials later said Israel was behind the killing of Fakrizadeh, who died after a pickup truck full of explosives exploded in front of his vehicle and was then sprayed. bullet. The assassination was one of a series of attacks targeting Iranian nuclear scientists dating back to 2010, which Iran has blamed on Israel.
In August 2020, Al Qaeda’s second commander, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, was shot dead in Tehran by Israeli special forces on a motorcycle.
