United News of Bangladesh

Hossein Salami, the chief of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has been killed in an Israeli strike on Tehran’s nuclear facility, according to Iran’s state media. The report said that several other senior Iranian officials were also killed in the early Friday morning attack. Israeli forces launched coordinated strikes on multiple locations, including the Iranian capital Tehran, on Friday at dawn. Their state television reported that the IRGC’s headquarters in Tehran was among the sites targeted. Over the past 20 months, Tehran has found itself entangled in multiple crises amid mounting instability in the Middle East. Salami’s death, analysts suggest, is a major blow to Iran’s leadership, as he was one of the country’s most powerful figures. Hossein Salami was born in 1960 in the Iranian city of Golpayegan. He joined the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq war in 1980 while still a college student. Rising through the ranks, he went on to lead the IRGC’s air forces and later served as its deputy commander. Trump urges Iran to make nuclear deal as conflict with Israel escalates Salami gained notoriety both inside Iran and internationally for his hardline stance against the United States and its allies. In a 2016 speech, he declared, “A fertile ground has been prepared to deactivate, collapse, and destroy the Zionist regime.” During the same speech, he also issued threats against the United States. On April 21, 2019, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Salami as the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, replacing Maj Gen Mohammad Ali Jafari. His appointment came during a critical time when President Trump, during his first term at office, had withdrawn the nuclear deal and imposed severe sanctions on Iran. The Trump administration had also designated the IRGC as a “terrorist organisation.” In 2020, following a US drone strike that killed IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad Airport, Salami warned that American and Israeli commanders would become retaliatory targets. “If our commanders are threatened, no enemy commander will be safe,” he declared.