Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), replaced his intelligence chief Friday in an effort to enhance the country’s efforts to confound its enemies.
“The Guards’ chief Major General Hossein Salami appointed General Mohammad Kazemi as the new head of the IRGC Intelligence Organisation,” Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif said in a statement as reported by AFP.
Salami moved outgoing clergyman Hossein Taeb, who had held the position for more than 12 years, to a key role as his own adviser, according to the statement.
The replacement of the intelligence chief comes after the targeted killing of a number of members of the IRGC, which is designated as a terrorist group by Iran’s arch enemy the United States.
Iran and U.S. ally Israel have been engaged in a years-long proxy war but tensions have risen on the back of a string of high-profile incidents Tehran has blamed on the Jewish state.
Such has been the damage done to Iran’s leadership and nuclear program by the attacks, a Tehran court on Thursday ordered the U.S. government to pay over $4 billion to the families of Iranian nuclear scientists who have been killed in targeted attacks in recent years, as Breitbart News reported.
The largely symbolic ruling underscores the escalating tensions between Iran and the West over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program, with negotiations to restore the tattered atomic accord at a standstill.
Although Tehran has blamed Israel in the past for slayings targeting Iranian nuclear scientists since a decade ago, Iran did not directly accuse its arch-foe Israel in its announcement.
Iran has not recognized Israel since the 1979 Islamic Revolution that ousted the pro-West monarchy and brought hardline Islamists to power.
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