On May 22, Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a senior official of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was sitting in his car in Tehran when he was shot and killed by an armed motorcycle squad. In Iran, he was mourned by thousands of people who attended his funeral and hailed him as a hero for taking on the Islamic State. In the Israeli press, however, he was derided as the man who plotted a series of terror strikes against Israeli diplomats in India and Thailand and who was tasked with abducting Israelis and foreigners abroad. Iran promptly blamed Israel for his killing and vowed to avenge him.
Khodaei was just one of seven Iranian officials and scientists who appear to have been killed since late May, but his death was the only one Iran would officially pin on Israel, even though there is little doubt among U.S., Iranian, and Israeli analysts and former security officials that the killings are part a covert war between the two countries. Nearly all of the Iranians who died—a geologist, two engineers, and two members of the IRGC’s aerospace unit—appear to be linked to either Iran’s nuclear facilities or the military infrastructure Tehran aids its proxies with.
