The IRGC official killed by gunmen in Tehran Sunday was responsible for recruiting operatives for terror attacks against Israelis, an informed source has told Iran International.
The source, a European security official, who spoke to Iran International on condition of anonymity said Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei who was shot in front of his house in Tehran in broad daylight Sunday had been involved in a number of terrorist operations against Israelis in three continents including Asia, Europe, and Africa including an attack in the Indian capital, New Delhi, on February 13, 2012.
The intelligence source also told Iran International that Sayyad-Khodaei tried not to attract attention to himself as an intelligence agent and avoided wearing the IRGC uniform. According to the source, Sayyad-Khodaei who went by the alias Shekarchi was fluent in regional languages including Turkish, Kurdish, and Arabic.
“Sayyad-Khodaei was responsible for the work on the ground when the Qods Force’s secretive Unit 840 tasked him with carrying out missions,” the source said.
In the 2012 New Delhi attack, the explosion of a magnetic bomb attached to the car used by the wife of Israel’s defense attaché wounded her and his driver.
Israeli and Indian media at the time said a motorcyclist had placed the explosive device on the vehicle and pointed out that the attack resembled some of the attacks that had killed four of Iran’s nuclear scientists between 2010 and 2012.
Two of the attacks on Iran’s nuclear scientists were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to their cars.
Yoram Cohen, then chief of Israel’s security agency Shin Bet, also accused Iran of trying to take revenge for covert operations, including the assassinations of its nuclear scientists.
On the same day as the New Delhi attack in 2012, other operations against Israeli targets, allegedly by Iranian agents, were uncovered and aborted in Tbilisi, Georgia, and several Central Asian countries.
Then prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, immediately blamed Iran for the bombs aimed at Israeli Embassy personnel in the Indian capital, New Delhi and Tbilisi.
Two days later, on February 14, a series of explosions against Israeli diplomats occurred in Bangkok, Thailand, for which the Thai authorities blamed Iranian nationals. One of the suspects, Saeed Moradi, was seriously injured before the operations were carried out when the bomb meant for the attack exploded at his rented house and injured him. He sustained further injuries during a standoff with the Thai police when a grenade he threw at the police bounced off a tree and severed both his legs.
Moradi was convicted in court for attempting to kill an Israeli diplomat and was sentenced to life. Moradi and his two co-conspirators were freed from Thai prison in November 2020 in exchange for Kylie Moore-Gilbert, an Australian-British prisoner in Iran. They received heroes' welcome upon their arrival to Tehran.
“The Qods Force chose individuals without any connection to the IRGC for these operations. They were civilians who had not had proper military training. Sayyad-Khodaei was responsible for establishing contact with criminals including drug traffickers to carry out such operations on its behalf,” the source told Iran International.
He added that Mansour Rasouli, who was reportedly interrogated by the Mossad a year ago inside Iran, was among the individuals recruited by Khodaei to kill Israelis and others in countries including Turkey and Germany.
On April 30, Israeli media, including Channel 12, released an audio recording with the photo of a man introduced as Iranian national Mansour Rasouli, 52, who they claimed the Mossad had interrogated inside Iran. Israeli media did not provide a source for the audio file that they said Mossad operatives posing as Iranian secret service recorded at Rasouli's home in Iran.
The recording surfaced hours after Iran International's report of an alleged Iranian triple assassination plot. Iran International's diplomatic sources had said a member of the IRGC'S Qods Force had been detained in an unnamed European country for assassination plots in Germany, France and Turkey.
In an audio tape released in early May, a man who introduced himself as Rasouli claimed he had been taken by unknown agents and been coerced to make the confessions in the audio recording.
“Revenge against the criminals for the blood of the great martyr [Hassan Khodaei] will definitely be taken, without any doubt” Raisi who was speaking to reporters before leaving Tehran for Oman for an official visit said.
In lightly veiled terms, Raisi accused the United States and Israel for the assassination saying the “global arrogance” and those, who he said, had been defeated in battlefields” by defenders of Shiite holy shrines in Syria had resorted to assassinations due to their “frustration”.
Colonel Hassan Sayyad-Khodaei, who Israeli media say was the acting commander of an elite Qods (Quds) Force unit, Unit 840, was shot dead behind the wheel of his unarmored Iranian-made Kia Pride by two gunmen who fled the scene on a motorbike.
The colonel’s name appeared as Sayyad-Khodayari in earlier reports.
The assassination took place in front of Sayyad-Khodaei ’s home on Mojahedin-e Eslam street very close to the Iranian Parliament in central Tehran in broad daylight.
There is no mention of Unit 840 of Qods Force, the extraterritorial arm of the IRGC, in Iranian media. The existence of a such a unit has only been reported by Israeli media, which in November 2020 reported that Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) had accused Unit 840 of placing explosives on Syrian border.
IRGC Spokesman Ramezan Sharif on Monday blamed intelligence services of the “global domination system and Zionism” for the assassination which in Iranian official rhetoric refer to the United States and Israel. Armed Forces’ Spokesman Abolfazl Shekarchi said intelligence bodies are investigating the assassination and will announce its results later.
Earlier this month, Mansour Rasouli, an Iranian man who was seen in a video confessing to planning assassinations on behalf of the IRGC claimed in another video shared on social media that he was coerced by unknown people, allegedly Mossad agents, into making the confession.
Israel’s Channel 13 news on Sunday claimed that Rasouli had been one of the operatives under Sayyad-Khodaei ’s direction.
Israel’s Channel 12 also claimed that Sayyad-Khodaei had also been behind an attempt by Iranian operatives recently uncovered by Shin Bet to lure Israeli academics, businesspeople, and former defense officials abroad to kidnap them as well as alleged plot to kill five Israelis in Cyprus.
Diplomatic sources who spoke to Iran International in April said the man in charge of the alleged assassination plots was a member of the secretive Unit 840 whose mission is to conduct operations against Western targets and Iranian opposition groups and individuals.
In another statement that seemed like an attempt to compensate for the security lapse in Tehran, the IRGC and Iran's Intelligence Ministry announced they had discovered and captured a team of "thugs" linked with Israel's Mossad.
The statement said the Israeli intelligence networks "were engaged in stealing and damaging public and private properties, kidnapping and getting forced confessions".
Iranian state-run media on Sunday, around the time of the assassination, also said the IRGC’s intelligence organization had arrested members of an Israeli spy ring operating in the country.
In recent years Iran has blamed Israel for the assassination of its nuclear scientists as well asMohsen Fakhrizadeh, said to be Iran’s top nuclear man, in November 2020 in a highly complicated operation east of the capital Tehran involving a remotely-controlled one-ton automated weapon that had been smuggled into the country in pieces.
Iran has also accused Israel of sabotage operations against its nuclear facilities including an explosion in April 2021 that inflicted major damage to the Natanz uranium enrichment site.
Israel has never officially taken responsibility for any of these assassinations and sabotage operations but also never denied involvement.
