On the evening of May 22, IRGC Colonel Hassan Sayad Khodai, one of the senior commanders of the Iranian regime’s Quds Force, was shot dead in Tehran.
Khodai was born in 1972, growing up in Miyaneh city in East Azerbaijan province. He joined the regime’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) in his teens in 1987.
The state-run Nasim news agency reported that ‘Colonel Khodai was responsible for transferring missile technology to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.’
According to the ‘Defa Press (Defense Press)’ website, affiliated with the regime’s Ministry of Defense, Khodai was formerly the Deputy Minister of Research and Technology Development of the Defense Industries Organization.
The ‘Quds’ telegram channel, heavily affiliated with the regime’s Quds Force, announced, “Colonel Khodai had just returned from his mission in Syria a few days ago.” The regime’s media have also reported that he was close to Qassem Soleimani, the eliminated commander of the Quds Force.
Quoting Israeli media, the regime’s state media also claimed, “Colonel Khodai was also responsible for planning terrorist attacks and kidnapping Israelis.”
Without giving details, in a statement by the Revolutionary Guards, the incident was attributed to ‘counter-revolutionary and global arrogance’ groups, which could refer to countries such as Israel.
The IRGC also said that Khodai was a ‘defender of the sanctuary’, a term used for Iranians who are active on behalf of the state in Syria or Iraq. Iran is a key ally of Bashar al-Assad in his bloody campaign against the people of Syria.
Khodai is the most prominent IRGC official to be killed in Iran since the elimination of leading nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrisadeh in November 2020, known as the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Tehran had blamed Israel for the attack on Fakhrisadeh’s convoy near Tehran. It later came to light that he had been acting in the role of Deputy Secretary of Defense.
In January 2020, Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike in Iraq. Soleimani had commanded the Quds Force of the IRGC, which is responsible for the regime’s foreign operations, warmongering, and global terrorism.
With a great deal of fanfare, the regime vowed to take revenge for these killings but has never actually followed through with such hollow announcements.
The Twitter account of Noornews, which is said to be close to the Supreme National Security Council of the regime, wrote, “The killing of Sayad Khodai is crossing the red line without calculation, which changes many equations. The perpetrators of this crime will pay a heavy price.”
IRGC’s Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami, also claimed, “The blood of Martyr Sayad Khodai will not go unanswered.”
