Iran vows to take revenge following assassination of officer

Iran’s president vowed Monday that his country would avenge the death of an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officer killed by assassins in Tehran over the weekend.

Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to Oman Monday morning, President Ebrahim Raisi called the assassination of Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a member of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, an act of “terrorism”, adding that Iran would take “revenge” for Khodaei’s killing.

“I insist on the serious pursuit [of the assassins] by security officials, and I have no doubt that the blood of this great martyr will be avenged.”

Raisi said that Iran’s probe into Khodaei’s assassination would revealed that “global arrogange” was behind the “criminal act”.

On Sunday, two motorcyclists opened fire on Khodaei, who was parked in front of his home in Tehran.

Iranian media outlets reported that Khodaei was shot five times, and that his wife found him slumped over in his car.

The IRGC denounced the assassination as a “criminal terrorist act”, and claimed that it had earlier on Sunday broken up a “network of thugs linked with the Zionist regime of Israel’s intelligence service”.