Who was Iran’s Revolutionary Guards chief killed in Israeli strikes?

Hossein Salami, commander of the Corps of the Iranian Islamic Revolution (IRGC), was killed in the strikes of Israel early Friday, the most senior Iranian leader to die during the attacks.

Salami, who was 65, was known to adopt a hard position against Iranian rivals, including Israel And the United States. Last month, he warned that Tehran “would open the doors of hell” if he was attacked by one or the other country.

Israel launched large -scale strikes against IranAffirming that she was targeting nuclear installations, ballistic missile factories and military commanders, despite US President Donald Trump warning his ally against the Sachatal Nuclear Agreements.

Tehran warned that Israel and the United States – which denies being involved – will pay a “heavy price” for attacks, which makes it fear that this leads an already fragile region in the large -scale war.

The strikes of Israel also killed Mohammad Bagheri, chief of staff of the country’s armed forces, Gholamali Rashid, deputy commander of the Iranian armed forces and several nuclear scientists.

One day before the strikes, Salami had declared that Iran was “fully ready for all scenarios, situations and circumstances”.

“The enemy thinks that he can fight Iran in the same way that he fights the defenseless Palestinians who are under an Israeli seat,” he said. “We are tested and experienced.”

Salami first joined the revolutionary guards – a powerful branch of the Iranian armed forces – in 1980 for Iran-Iraq war And became deputy commander in 2009, then commander a decade later.

Since the 2000s, it has been sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council and the United States for its involvement in Iranian nuclear and military programs.

Salami had boasted of the military capacities of Iran, declaring at one point that the country was “about to become a global power”.

He had welcomed the prospect of a military conflict with Israel and the United States. Following an Israeli strike against Iranian targets in Syria in 2019, Salami promised to “wipe the Zionist regime” of the political card.

After another strike in April of last year on the Iranian embassy in Syria, which killed seven members of the revolutionary guards, including two generals, Salami issued a similar warning: “Our courageous men will punish the Zionist regime.”

Iran and Israel were allies until a 1979 revolution in Iran, which caused a regime that used opposing Israel as a key element of its ideology.

The Iranian regime does not recognize the right of Israel today to exist. The supreme chief of the country, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called Israel a “cancerous tumor” which “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed”.

Israel says that the rhetoric of Tehran makes Iran an existential threat. Israel and its allies have also criticized the Iranian construction of proxy forces in the region, including the Hezbollah Lebanese militant group, which takes care of the destruction of Israel.

Salami and other superior officers of the revolution guards regularly advise the supreme chief of Iran.

The Iran office manager has set up The guardian of the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago to defend the country’s Islamic system and provide a counterweight to the regular armed forces, in which they did not trust.

With more than 190,000 active staff members and boasting of their own fields, navy and air, the revolutionary guards are one of the country’s most powerful military and political groups.

While the Iranian army keeps the country’s territory, the revolutionary guards have been set up to protect the regime itself.

As the group reports the supreme leader directly, his power is not easily verified by other institutions.

He oversees Iran’s strategic weapons and controls the paramilitary basy resistance force, which has often been used to remove domestic dissent.

It is also believed that the revolutionary guards control approximately a third of the Iranian economy through a series of subsidiaries and trusts. It also has billions of dollars in construction and engineering contracts.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, the group has an influence by providing money, weapons, technology, training and advice to allied governments.

Some most elite members of the guards of the revolutionaries exploit its dark stranger’s arm of operations, the force Quds, which has links with armed groups in the region, notably in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, in Palestinian territoriesand Yemen.

The former agents of the revolutionary guards continue to occupy influential positions in government, parliament and other political organizations. They understand the former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the former parliamentary president Ali Larijani.

Additional report by Koh Ewe and Raffi Berg