Hussein Hamedani, Iranian General, Killed by Islamic State in Syria

A top Iranian military commander was killed by Islamic State fighters on the outskirts of the Syrian city of Aleppo on Thursday night, Iranian media reported. 

In a statement Friday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani lamented the death of Gen. Hussein Hamedani, a key player in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Forces and a ground-level commander in Tehran’s ongoing military support of Syria’s government.

The agency said the general rose to prominence in Iran’s military during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

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The Long War Journal, meanwhile, noted that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is loyal to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and played a central role in crushing pro-reform student protests in Tehran in 1999 and again in 2009.

The Journal, published by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, said Hamedani was head of an IRGC security unit in Tehran, where police, the Guards and its Basij militia allies clashed with protesters — and that the general has since 2011 been subjected to international sanctions for violating human rights.

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