At the start of February 2015 there was news that another
member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) was killed in Iraq.
IRGC members were deployed to Iraq shortly after the fall of Mosul in June
2014. They have provided planning, arms, training, and advising to the Iraqi
Security Forces (ISF), militias and peshmerga. Many are on the frontlines
causing a number of casualties. This was the seventh loss for the IRGC in Iraq.
(via Twitter)
February
9 it was reported that the Islamic State killed Iranian Revolutionary
Guards Corps General Mohammed Reza Hosseini in Salahaddin. He died on February
7, and was buried in Najaf upon his request. Hosseini was a veteran of the
Iran-Iraq War and an intelligence chief for the IRGC. The Iranian press claimed
he was killed defending the Askari shrine in Samarra, but that was unconfirmed.
Tehran has justified its presence in Iraq partly as a religious duty to protect
the Shiite shrines in the country, similar to how it used the Sayid Zainab
shrine in the Damascus suburbs to explain its support for the Bashar al-Assad
government in Syria. Therefore almost every Iranian death in Iraq is said to be
in Samarra whether they died there or not.
The general was the seventh Iranian loss in Iraq that has
been reported. The first
death was of Ali Reza Moshajari who died in Karbala in June. He might have
died in a car accident. Another unidentified IRGC member passed away that month
as well. The next month Colonel Kamal Shirkhani and Colonel Shujaat Almadari
Morjani were killed. Shirkhani was an IRGC pilot and was probably spotting for
Iranian air strikes or Iranians flying Iraqi Air Force planes. In December
General Hamid Taqavi was killed by an IS sniper in Balad. Finally, in January
2015 Mehdi Norouzi, a commander in the Basij militia died fighting IS in
Salahaddin. The Basij are often called up to provide manpower for the IRGC when
it has large mobilizations. IRGC’s presence in the front is the reason why it
has suffered most of these losses. More can be expected in the future as
Tehran has made a major commitment to Iraq.
SOURCES
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, “Another Iranian Commander
Killed in Iraq,” 2/9/15
Shafaq News, “Iranian intelligence commander killed in
battles with ISIS in Samarra,” 2/9/15
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