The most well known of Tehran’s casualties was the 67 year old Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Brigadier General, Hossein Hamedani. Announced as having been killed on October 9th, Hamedi was reportedly killed in Aleppo. Officially, he was described by the Iranians as a, “high-ranking military advisor” to Assad. But to write Hamedani off as merely an “advisor” would be the equivalent of referring to Napoleon as just, “a French general.”

Hamedani’s career spanned the decades as a true believer in Ayatollah Khomeini’s radical Islamic Revolution in Iran. In the early days of the Islamic Republic of Iran and like his cohort, IRGC Quds Force leader Qassem Suleimani, Hamedani received his baptism by fire combatting insurgents in Iranian Kurdistan and fought in the Iran-Iraq War. Additionally, he had served as deputy commander in the IRGC-controlled Iranian militia known as the Basij. More recently, Hamedani was a key figure involved in suppressing Iran’s Green Movement, which protested the rigged 2009 presidential election. According to Iranian publications, Hamedani later went on to operate out of Najaf, Iraq.

Hamedani was also one of the more vocal IRGC leadership elements operating in Syria. While IRGC involvement in Syria is general knowledge, Tehran often masks their intervention. Still, on May 2014, Hamedani announced IRGC involvement in the conflict, and went so far as to say that thousands of IRGC and Basij would be sent to Syria. In 2014 he remarked, “today we fight in Syria for interests such as the Islamic Revolution”…

With the loss of Hamedani came the loss of a major leadership element within the IRGC, one Tehran will not likely be able to regain. Still, Hamedani was not the last IRGC commander to have met his end in Syria in the past few days. On October 12th, two more IRGC Brigadier Generals were slain.