Iranian Revolutionary Guard general reportedly killed in Israeli attack

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A prominent general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard died in an Israeli airstrike Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Beirut, Iranian media reported on Saturday.

The killing of General Abbas Nilforushan marks the latest death Iran has suffered in nearly a year Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip is on the verge of becoming a regional conflict. His death increases pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled this in recent months it wants to negotiate with the West about sanctions that are destroying its economy.

Nilforushan, 58, was killed in the attack in Lebanon on Friday that killed Nasrallah, the state-run Tehran Times newspaper reported. Ahmad Reza Pour Khaghan, the deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, also confirmed Nilforushan’s death and described him as a “guest of the Lebanese people,” state news agency IRNA said.

Khaghan also reportedly said that Iran has the right to retaliate under international law.

Nilforushan served as the Guard’s deputy commander of operations and oversaw its ground forces. It was not immediately clear what he was doing in Lebanon on Friday. The Guard’s Expeditionary Quds Force has armed, trained and relied on Hezbollah as part of its strategy for decades to rely on regional militias as a counterweight to Israel and the United States.

Nilforushan, like other Guard members who view Israel as Iran’s main enemy, has long mocked and criticized the country.

“The Zionist regime has many ethnic, cultural, social and military divisions. It is more vulnerable and doomed than ever before,” Nilforushan said, according to an IRNA report in 2022.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Nilforushan in 2022, saying he led an organization “directly responsible for protest suppression.” These sanctions intervened the months of protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini after her arrest because she allegedly did not wear a headscarf or hijab in the interests of the police. At the time, Nilforushan accused Iran’s enemies abroad of fomenting demonstrations led by Iranian women that questioned both the hijab requirement and the country’s theocracy.

Nilforushan also served in Syria, supporting President Bashar Assad in his country’s decades-long war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Spring. Like many of his colleagues, he began his military career in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

In 2020, Iranian state television called him a “comrade” of General Qassem Soleimanithe head of the Quds Force who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad that same year.

Nilforushan’s death comes as Iran has signaled in recent months that it wants to change course toward the West after years of tensions stemming from the U.S.’s unilateral withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal with the world powers by then-President Donald Trump in 2018.

Iranian voters voted in July Reform President Masoud Pezeshkian after a helicopter crash that killed people President Ebrahim Raisia stubborn protégé of 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Although he is critical of Israel, Pezeshkian has maintained that Iran is willing to negotiate over its nuclear program, which is now enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels. Although Iran has been able to sell oil abroad despite the sanctions, it has likely been at a significant discount and energy prices have continued to fall in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, Iran is still threatening retaliation for the killing of Soleimani and the alleged Israeli attack in Tehran Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July. Iran has not explained why it has not yet struck, despite launching an unprecedented direct attack on Israel in April could not seriously damage any major target.

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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.