Major General Ali Shademani, a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has a long history of suppressing the Iranian people and committing human rights violations.
Ali Shademani joined the IRGC in 1979. He was an active member during the Iran-Iraq war and served as the commander of the Ansar al-Hossein Division 32 from 1986 to 1988.
Shademani first met Hossein Hamedani—an IRGC commander who was killed in Syria in 2015 as part of the Iranian regime’s intervention in the country—shortly after the 1979 revolution in the city of Hamedan. This relationship eventually led to terrorist operations outside Iran’s borders, including in Syria and Iraq.
After the revolution, Ali Shademani accompanied Hamedani to the city of Paveh to suppress the people of Kurdistan. Shademani then spent six months in Sanandaj and Saqqez engaged in violent crackdowns and killings of Kurds in the region.
Continued repression and Ali Shademani’s role in the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters and the Quds Force
In late 1983, Ali Shademani went to Tehran for a command training course. Afterward, he became the commander of the IRGC’s Saheb al-Zaman Division. Some time later, he was assigned to the IRGC’s external operations base known as “Ramazan Headquarters.”
He was appointed head of operations at this base. The Ramazan Headquarters was the IRGC’s sole extraterritorial base and was responsible for terrorist operations outside Iran’s borders, particularly targeting Iranian dissidents. After the death of regime founder Ruhollah Khomeini, this base became the foundation for forming the IRGC’s terrorist Quds Force.
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In 2016, amid structural changes within the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters and the General Staff of the Armed Forces, Ali Shademani was appointed as the coordinating deputy of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters.
Ali Shademani’s views on proxy groups and regional expenditures
In September 2019, Ali Shademani stated regarding the regime’s proxy groups: “Today, apart from our army and IRGC, we have five other armies with us in the axis of resistance, in terms of belief and spirit.” He openly defended the use of Iranian public wealth to support regional dictators and the regime’s allied militias.
Shademani said: “Some people sat down and claimed that we spent all the country’s money in Syria! Look at how much foreign currency revenue the country had in the past ten years and what portion of it was spent on the resistance front, which primarily served sacred goals and the nation’s interests?”
In response to a question about the threat of war against the clerical regime, Shademani had stated: “Some people have spread a truly ridiculous rumor that some of these countries… have asked our enemy to take action against us. The same thing Israel does by asking America to attack us. They know that if a war starts in this region, nothing of them will remain. Some think that if a certain country has a few aircraft, it holds power—those planes will be destroyed on the runway before they even take off. So this is more like a joke.”
He also spoke about the IRGC’s posturing and the Khatam al-Anbiya Headquarters, saying: “One of our essential needs is not to be surprised. As much as we focus on our own capabilities, we also devote attention to monitoring the enemy. If we don’t monitor their behavior, we may get hit.”
From June 13 to June 17, he served as commander of the IRGC’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters. It was reported that he was killed in an Israeli strike, but this news has not yet been confirmed by the regime.
