TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Ministry says it will exhaust all its capacities towards pursuing the recent assassination of Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).
Colonel Khodaei was assassinated in the capital Tehran at around 4 p.m. local time (1130 GMT) on Sunday when two motorcyclists shot him five times while he was in his car.
In a statement, the IRGC said the assassination was carried out by “counterrevolutionary elements” adding that necessary measures have been taken to identify and arrest the assailant or assailants.
Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian said Khodaei’s martyrdom has proven that Iran, which is at the forefront of the global fight against terrorism, continues to be constantly targeted itself with “state terrorism” and by “terror masterminds”.
The minister blasted the “deafening silence and even support” provided to the evil phenomenon by some international parties, who bogusly lay claim to contributing to the fight against terrorism and defending the human rights.
“The Foreign Ministry will deploy all its political, legal, and international capacities towards pursuing the atrocity’s case,” in order to punish the perpetrators and hold its other elements, mastermind, and supporters accountable, it said.
The Nour News website, which is close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, has described the assassination as a “miscalculated crossing of a red line that will change many calculations”.
“The masterminds and agents of this crime will pay a heavy price,” it said.
The occupying regime of Israel’s Channel 1 said in a report that the regime has put all of its diplomatic missions across the world on alert following the assassination.
The channel recalled Israel’s role in the assassination of at least seven Iranian nuclear scientists in the past, apparently suggesting that the terror operation had been a follow-up to the regime’s atrocities targeting Iran.
“Contrary to the previous occasions, where the victims used to be people active in Iran’s nuclear program, this time a ranking member of the IRGC was the target of assassination,” it said.