Iran vows to ‘avenge’ killing of Revolutionary Guards colonel

Tehran, Iran – AFP

Iran will avenge the killing of a Revolutionary Guards colonel who was shot dead in Tehran, President Ebrahim Raisi warned on Monday.

Assailants on motorcycles on Sunday hit Colonel Sayyad Khodai with five bullets as he sat in his car outside his Tehran home.

Iran blamed “elements linked to the global arrogance”, its term for its arch enemy the United States and Washington’s allies including Israel.

It was the most high-profile killing inside Iran since the November 2020 murder of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — the ideological arm of Iran’s military — described Khodai as a “defender of the sanctuary”, a term used for those who work on behalf of the Islamic republic in Syria or Iraq.

Iran maintains significant political influence in both countries and has backed President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria’s grinding civil war.

Khodai’s killing came as negotiations between Iran and world powers to restore a frayed 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since March.

One of the main sticking points is Tehran’s demand to remove the Guards from a US terrorism list — a request rejected by Washington.

The 2015 agreement gave Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear programme to prevent Tehran from developing an atomic bomb — something it has always denied wanting to do.

But the nuclear agreement was left hanging by a thread after then US president Donald Trump pulled out of it unilaterally in 2018 and reimposed biting economic sanctions on Tehran, prompting Iran to begin rolling back on its own commitments.