IRAN: Two Revolutionary Guards officers killed in Syria

Colonel Farshad Hasounizadeh and Hamid Mokhtarband were killed by the “terrorists” during military advisory mission in Syria, the announcement read, but did not specify the time when they were killed.

Pictures of Gen Qassem Suleimani, commander of the al-Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards, addressing fighters in Syria, reinforce the perception that a new stage of deeper Iranian involvement may now be beginning.

In a public message of condolence, President Hassan Rouhani praised Hamedani as a “martyr” and said his death was a “big loss”. Several have died in recent years, a few of them allegedly killed by Israel.

The Saberin Brigade is a special forces unit of the IRGC formed in 1998 to serve as a quick reaction force to prevent armed infiltration into Iran.

Hamdani was one of the IRGC’s leading generals and the country’s top military advisor in Syria.

Lebanon’s Shia Hezbollah militia, meanwhile, lost two senior commanders in Syria’s Hama province last week. Mohsen Rezaee, a former guards commander, said: “We will bury takfiris in Syria and Iraq and we will prove to the world that conspiracy and deception has no place in Islam”. At a conference in Hamedan he said that Iran shared with Syria the experience it had amassed during the Iran-Iraq War, and that if there were Iranian veterans [fighting] in the Syrian army, it would have no problem in dealing with the rebels. Since the end of September it’s been joined by Russian Federation, which started bombing Islamic State and other opposition groups. The objectives of the “enemy camp”, he said, were to restrict Iran’s regional influence, and to weaken Hezbollah, turning it from a military into a political organization.