{"id":103569,"date":"2022-05-23T05:04:03","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T10:04:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/?p=103569"},"modified":"2022-05-23T05:04:03","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T10:04:03","slug":"colonel-in-iran-revolutionary-guards-assassinated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2022\/05\/23\/colonel-in-iran-revolutionary-guards-assassinated\/","title":{"rendered":"Colonel in Iran Revolutionary Guards assassinated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"BBC \u2014 A colonel in Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has been shot dead in a rare assassination in Tehran.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Two gunmen on a motorbike are reported to have shot Colonel Sayad Khodai five times in a car outside his home.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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So far, no group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, and a manhunt is under way for the gunmen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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It is the biggest security breach in Iran since 2020 when a leading nuclear scientist was killed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Images from the scene show a bloodied man slumped over in a car with his seatbelt still on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Col Khodai was a senior member of the elite Quds Force, a shadowy external arm of the IRGC that carries out operations abroad. The United States accuses the force of supporting terrorist organisations and being responsible for attacks across the Middle East.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Colonel<\/span>IMAGE SOURCE,<\/span>EPA<\/span><\/div>\n

Colonel Sayad Khodai\"Short<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

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Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the colonel was assassinated by “sworn enemies” of Iran who are “the terrorist agents affiliated with the global arrogance” – a reference to the US and its allies – and said other countries that “claim to be fighting terrorism are regrettably silent and support it”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Previously,\u00a0Iranian officials have accused Israel<\/a>\u00a0of being behind such high profile assassinations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As news of the assassination broke, Iranian state news reported that Revolutionary Guards had exposed and arrested a network of Israeli spies. There has been no official comment from Israel.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Khodai is the second high profile Quds Force leader to be killed in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2020,\u00a0Iran’s most powerful military commander, Gen Qasem Soleimani, was killed<\/a>\u00a0by a US air strike in Iraq. He spearheaded Iranian military operations in the Middle East as head of the Quds Force, and his death marked a major escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In the same year,\u00a0nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was shot dead<\/a> in Tehran. Fakhrizadeh – who was so important he was always accompanied by several bodyguards – played a crucial role in Iran’s nuclear programme but the government insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Iran accused Israel of using a remote-controlled weapon to kill him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BBC \u2014 A colonel in Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) has been shot dead in a rare assassination in Tehran. Two gunmen on a motorbike are reported to have shot Colonel Sayad Khodai five times in a car outside his home. So far, no group has claimed responsibility for Sunday’s attack, and a manhunt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":103570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latests"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103569"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103572,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103569\/revisions\/103572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}