Iran Guards chief killed in strike, outspoken opponent of Israel
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief Hossein Salami, killed in an Israeli air strike on Tehran Friday, was a veteran officer close to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and known for his tirades against Israel and its main ally, the United States.
"If you make the slightest mistake, we will open the gates of hell for you," the white-bearded general warned Tehran's archenemies during a tour of an underground missile base in January.
Born in 1960 in central Iran, Salami joined the IRGC in 1980 at the start of the devastating eight-year war launched by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
He spent most of his career in the IRGC, a military set up parallel to national armed forces after the 1979 overthrow of the Western-backed shah to defend the goals of the Islamic revolution.
The IRGC is now 125,000-strong, according to the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, although Iran has never released an official figure.
Salami rose through the ranks to become head of the IRGC's aerospace division and was placed on the US sanctions list for his participation in Iran's nuclear and military programs.
He served as IRGC deputy commander for nine years before being promoted to the top job in 2019 in a major reshuffle.
Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, had made support for the Palestinian cause a centerpiece of Tehran's foreign policy, and Salami repeatedly alluded to calls for Israel to be wiped from the map.
In a 2018 speech, Salami said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should "learn to swim in the Mediterranean Sea," in preparation to flee.
The IRGC played a central role in Iran's forward foreign policy in the Arab world, which saw the Tehran-backed militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, respectively, lead Gaza and Lebanon into war with Israel in 2023.
The conflicts resulted in the first-ever direct exchanges of fire between Iran and Israel last year and would eventually lead to the much bigger wave of Israeli strikes on Iran on Friday, one of which killed Salami.
