On Sunday, a senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard was killed in broad daylight by two unidentified men riding a motorbike, according to state television. The Guard provided few details about the attack, but “blamed the killing on ‘global arrogance,’ typically code for the United States and Israel,” as reported by the Associated Press. Such wording may signify a connection to other motorbike killings in Iran attributed to Israel. State media reported that Colonel Hassan Sayyad Khodaei was shot outside of his home in Tehran five times and identified him as a “defender of the shrine,” a label that, according to the Associated Press, refers to “Iranians who fight against the extremist Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq within the Guard’s elite Quds force that oversees foreign operations.” A prosecutor visiting the scene of the attack insisted that police quickly find and arrest the gunmen, suggesting that Khodaei may have been a significant figure in the Guard’s foreign activities. The Guard described the killing as a “terrorist attack” in a statement posted on its website.
