Qasem Soleymani’s Deputy is Killed in Syria

Following the death of Hossein Hamedani, a senior IRGC Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria, various officials of the force have bestowed rather exaggerated achievements on him while also threatening to take “harsh revenge” against the perpetrators of his death. And in their first public step, have taken steps to shut the newspaper that did not refer to Hamedani’s death as “martyrdom,” calling it a death.

For example, the top IRGC commander, General Aziz Jaafari used the word martyr rather than killed when he said, “The people and government of Syria are indebted to martyr Hossein Hamedani and had it not been for him, Damascus would have definitely collapsed.” He also revealed that Hamedani’s mission had in fact finished before his death and said, “Even though his mission had already ended in Syria, he had returned to the resistance front and played an important role there.”

Another IRGC commander General Yadollah Javani who headed the political office of the force also spoke about Hamedani. “The survival of Bashar Assad in Syria is the direct result of the defense policies of the IRGC generals,” he said and added, “The planners of the crisis in the region and Syria had initially said that they would accomplish their goals within three month and Bashar Assad would fall, taking Syria out of the resistance front. But after more than four years their goals in Syria have not yet materialized and the major reason for this is because of the military advice of the IRGC generals.”

The deputy IRGC top commander Mohammad-Reza Naghdi who heads the Basij ideological para-military force sent a condolence message which in part reads, “We shall take revenge on America and Israel and the main perpetrators of the Middle East sedition and the main actors all of these crimes.”

On Thursday, the official news agency of the Islamic republic issued a statement announcing that the former IRGC commander of Tehran’s Mohammad Rasool-Allah force had been killed near the town of Halab in Syria after an armed clash with the armed DAESH (a.k.a. the self-proclaimed Islamic State) group.

Hossein Hamedani was among the IRGC commanders who had been involved in the violent suppression of protestors in Iran’s Kurdistan in the initial years of Iran’s 1979 revolution and was among the first founders of the IRGC in that region. During the 8-year Iran-Iraq war too he was the commander of Ansar-al-Hossein of Hamedan province and the 16th division of Ghods in the Gilan province.

After the war, Hamedani held other senior and influential posts such as the deputy commander of the Basij force and advisor to the top IRGC commander. Among his last posts was commander of the Tehran’s Mohammad-Rasool-Allah force which violently clashed with demonstrators in the aftermath of the rigged 2009 elections. On December 21, 2011, as unrest was broiling in some countries of the region, Hamedani was removed from his command of the Tehran IRGC force and appointed as the advisor to the top IRGC commander.

According to Revolutionary Guard commanders, as unrest in Syria grew, he was sent to that country to help the remnants of Bashar Assad’s regime. Some of these commanders refer to Hamedani as Qasem Soleymani’s deputy and commander of the IRGC force in Syria.

Guard commander Golali Babai, the former head of the Literary Organization of the Defensive War (i.e. the 8-year Iran-Iraq war) has said, “Hamedani had been in Syria for over three years as an advisor and pursued specific actions. During several occasions he had described to us the fall of Syria and the end of the situation (end of the regime) and that many had planned to flee. The media, according to him, had also said Syria was done. In those circumstances, the only person who could give Bashar Assad hope was General Hossein Hamedani, while Damascus was on the verge of being overrun.”

Another IRGC commander, Ahmad Zolfaghar, who is the current deputy commander of Tehran’s Mohammad Rasool-Allah force also recounted his recollections in these words, “Hamedani was a warrior who worked as an advisor in Syria for about four years. He was among the leaders and founders of the IRGC.”

In the last two years, Hamedani had also been mentioned as the deputy commander of the Iman Hossein operational base. According to Hamedani’s own previous comments and those of other IRGC commanders, this base had been set up in 2013 and was responsible for recruiting, training and dispatching forces to Iraq and Syria and also to consult with para-military groups in line with the Islamic republic in Iraq and Syria. He had revealed soon after that that the IRGC was involved in Syria and that the Islamic Republic had created the “Second Hezbollah” in Syria. He had stressed that the, “IRGC had created 42 groups and 128 brigades comprising 70,000 young Alavi, Sunni and Shiite Muslims in the heart of the local para-military force (Basij) who had taken up security responsibilities of Syrian towns and provinces.” Later, he also revealed the presence of Iranian forces in Syria’s domestic war and had said that “130,000 basiji’s had been trained and awaited to go to Syria.” Beyond that, he had also said that a third basij force would be created in Iraq, after Lebanon and Syria. “It is no longer Iran alone who chants ‘Death to America.’ All nations say this in unison now,” he had said.

Hamedani was not the first senior IRGC commander to have been killed in Syria. Prior to him generals Mohammad-Ali Allahdadi, Abdollah Eskandari and Hassan Shateri had been killed, although none of them seem to have enjoyed the importance that Hamedani did as is indicated by the reported visit of Iran’s top leader, ayatollah Khamenei to Hamedani’s house after his death. International reports also reported that a Jihadi leader of Syrian Hezbollah had also been killed along with Hamedani.

As reported by Iran’s official news agency IRNA, Royesh Mellat newspaper had titled Hamedani’s death as “General Hossein Hamedani has been killed.” Hossein Nooshabadi called the choice of words as “uncultured,” adding that “while there may have not been any implied purpose in the choice of the word (killed), its use did not reflect the high-level goals of the regime.”