Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was among the senior Iranian officials killed in Israel’s sweeping air strikes that began on Thursday.
A longtime confidant of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Salami rose up the ranks in Iran, becoming head of the IRGC in 2019, when he replaced Mohammad Ali Jafari.
Like many of his contemporaries, Salami’s formative years came during the Iran-Iraq war that pitted the neighbours against each other and killed hundreds of thousands of people between 1980 and 1988.
Salami began his IRGC career during the war and is reported to have fought in several battles and held leadership positions.
His wartime experience gave him a badge of legitimacy that was one of the reasons he was then able to rise through the IRGC ranks. By 2005, Salami had been appointed as commander of the IRGC Aerospace Force, where he was responsible for ballistic missile and drone development, before being appointed deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC in 2009.
As is the case for many in the upper echelons of the Iranian military apparatus, Salami was subject to sanctions in 2007 by the United States for his role in missile development. The United Nations Security Council also sanctioned him for the same reason the year before.
Salami was also subject to Canadian sanctions for his role in subduing antigovernment protests in 2022, while the European Union sanctioned him for his involvement in supplying drones to Russia for military operations in Ukraine.
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