One More Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Commander Killed by the IDF

There have been dozens of these killings by the IDF of senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commanders, Basij leaders, nuclear scientists, heads of the air force, ballistic missile scientists, government spokesmen, and many others. A long list, that recently got longer by one, with the announcement by Israel that it had killed the IRGC naval commander, Alireza Tangsiri, who among other duties had organized the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Tangsiri was a very big fish. Now he sleeps with the fishes.

More on Alireza Tangsiri can be found here.

A strike killed the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Navy, Alireza Tangsiri, in Bandar Abbas, adjacent to the Strait of Hormuz, the IDF and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed after an Israeli official informed The Jerusalem Post earlier on Thursday.

Israeli defense sources have confirmed to the Post that the strike that killed Tangsiri took place early Thursday morning, at 3 a.m. local time. The sources said that a number of Tangsiri’s top naval aides were killed in the same attack.

In a video statement issued on Thursday, the prime minister said Tangsiri had “a great deal of blood on his hands” and was the person “who led the closure of the Strait of Hormuz….

Tangsiri was widely seen as taking an increasingly aggressive stance in recent weeks on Iran’s actions in the Gulf, particularly around the Strait of Hormuz.

Last week, he threatened retaliation against US facilities in the region, warning civilians and workers to stay away.

“Our list of targets is updated. Oil facilities associated with America are now on par with American bases and will come under fire with full force,” Tangsiri said at the time.

Scary stuff, no? Too bad that Admiral Tangsiri couldn’t be around to see how even more of his ships, now amounting to more than 100, and among them 92% of Iran’s largest warships, are now at the bottom of the Persian Gulf.

After Israel’s first main attack on Iran, on October 26, 2024, when the IDF destroyed almost all of Iran’s air defenses, the Iranians promised a terrible revenge. It never came. Then, again, the Iranians threatened that if Israel launches any further attack on their country, they would “wipe Israel off the face of the earth forever.” Why wait for another attack by Israel? Wasn’t that 12-day aggression by the Jewish state enough to justify an Iranian response that would end the Jewish state’s existence? If Iran was so all-powerful, why did it refrain from responding to that Israeli attack? The IRGC has its excuse: according to its version of events, Iran delivered a terrific blow against Israel in that war, and has no need to respond further unless of course the Israelis were foolish enough to attack Iran again, and then Iran would not only repeat its previous “victory,” but would wipe Israel “off the face of the earth.” Yet another attack came, and Israel still exists. And now Alireza Tangsiri, author of yet more threats on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran, is dead.

Alireza Tangsiri did his best for his home team, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was the naval mastermind who carried out the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, directed maritime attacks on civilian structures and military targets in the Gulf Arab states, and supported the Houthis with intelligence that will prove useful to them if they finally decide to join the fray. Who’s next on the IDF’s To-Do List?

The crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, has his own sources of information inside Iran. Many Iranians are fed up with the regime. They have seen the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the nuclear program go up in smoke. The tens of billions of dollars that Iran has spent on supporting its proxies with weaponry and money, especially Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, have similarly evanesced as a result of Israeli attack. Finally, the crushing blow delivered by the IDF to Iran, and then the further damage done by the American bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities at Natanz, Fordow, and Isfahan, have so demoralized many members of the IRGC that some of them now want out. They can no longer support a regime that has destroyed the country’s economy, with more than 30% of Iranians now living below the poverty line, that crushes peaceful dissent, and has that has misspent hundreds of billions of dollars both on failing proxies (Hamas, Hezbollah), and on a nuclear program that has just been demolished. They sense the regime is crumbling, and want to get out while there is still time.