Who was Hossein Salami, the Iranian military leader assassinated by Israel?

BarcelonaOne of the main objectives of Israel's attack in Iran this morning It was Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran's elite military corps. Salami, 65, was known for his hard line against Iran's rivals, including Israel and the US. Just the day before the attack, when it became public that Israel was preparing an operation against Iran, Salami reacted and assured that the Islamic Republic is prepared for "war at any level." He insisted, as he had on previous occasions, that Iran will respond to any aggression. "The enemy sometimes threatens us with military action. We have always said, and we repeat it now, that we are fully prepared for any scenario, under any circumstances," Salami told the Iranian news agency IRNA, defending that if Tel Aviv attacked them, Iran would not find the "Palestinians under siege." Last month, he had also warned that Tehran would "open the gates of hell" if attacked by Israel or the United States.

The general assumed leadership of the Revolutionary Guard in 2020 after the death of his predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, also in an airstrike, in this case carried out by United States forces under the command of Donald Trump, in his first term. The bombing that killed Soleimani, and left at least seven more dead, took place in Baghdad.

Salami had joined the Revolutionary Guard in 1980, during the Iran-Iraq War, and became deputy commander in 2009 and commander ten years later. The Iranian military leader had been sanctioned by the UN Security Council since 2007 and also by the United States for his alleged involvement in Iran's nuclear and military programs. He also imposed sanctions on Canada, following the Iranian regime's harsh repression of protests over the death of the young Mahsa Amini.

The Revolutionary Guard, Iran's most powerful armed force

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, created forty years ago to defend the country's Islamic system and provide a counterbalance to the regular armed forces, is Iran's most powerful armed force and the one with the greatest influence on the country's economy. Many analysts even believe that Iran has ceased to be a theocracy controlled by Shia clerics and has become a military state ruled by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. It has more than 190,000 active personnel, with its own ground, naval, and air forces. Because the group reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, its power is not easily checked by other institutions. The Revolutionary Guard Corps is also believed to control around a third of Iran's economy through a series of subsidiaries and trusts.

But Salami was not the only senior Iranian official killed in the Israeli attack. The Israeli military said it killed the "three highest-ranking military commanders": Mohamed Bagheri, chief of staff of the armed forces; Hossein Salami, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; and Major General Gholam Ali Rashid, commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters. More than 200 Israeli air force warplanes had attacked more than 100 targets in Iran.

Another major target of the attack was scientists from Iran's nuclear program. According to the Iranian news agency Tasnim, six of them were reportedly killed in the attack: Abdulhamid Minouchehr, Ahmadreza Zolfaghari, Seyyed Amirhossein Faqhi, Motlabizadeh, Mohamed Mehdi Tehranchi, and Fereydoun Abbasi.