ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced on Wednesday that one of its senior commanders on the ground in Syria was killed in a roadside bomb they say was planted by Israel a day before.
The IRGC said in a statement that “Colonel Davoud Jafari one of the IRGC’s aerospace force advisors in Syria, was killed by the elements of the Zionist regime in an explosion of a roadside bomb near Damascus.”
The IRGC did not release any further information about the incident but said that Israel should expect an answer to this “crime”.
Tehran and Tel Aviv have been involved in a shadow war for years, targeting each other in several countries including in Syria. Israel has been blamed for the assassination of a number of Iranian nuclear scientists as well as for attacks on nuclear facilities. Iran on the other hand avoids being dragged into a direct confrontation with Israel despite the IRGC threatening to wipe them out, instead opting for its proxies in Syria and Lebanon to attack Israeli interests.
Iranian media outlets released a photo of Colonel Jafari with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he appears to receive a keffiyeh from the leader. The photo was taken by IRGC-affiliated outlet Farsnews in January 2016 following the detention of ten US sailors by the IRGC in the Persian Gulf. The sailors were freed after 15 hours but the IRGC took photos of them in captivity for propaganda purposes.
The Supreme Leader met the guards involved in the detention of the American sailors to thank and praise them two weeks after the incident. Colonel Jafari was one of the IRGC guards who were especially praised by the Khamenei.
While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the killing of the IRGC senior commander, IRGC Quds Force advisors come under regular Israeli attack in Syria.
Iran has blamed Israel amongst other countries of fomenting unrest in Iran where the IRGC and other security forces have killed at least 437 people, including at least 60 children, since the outbreak of antigovernment protests in the aftermath of the killing of a Kurdish woman in police custody in Tehran in mid-September.
IRGC has blamed Israel for provoking Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region to cause unrest inside the country and has targeted the groups on four separate occasions with short-range ballistic missiles and Kamikaze drones since the beginning of the protests.
Israel‘s military intelligence chief Major-General Aharon Haliva said on Monday that the protests in the country were beginning to resemble a popular uprising and were greatly troubling the regime but there was “no real danger” to the survival of the regime in Tehran.
