Iran gets new IRGC Commander, military chief

TEHRAN: Following the deadly airstrikes on Tehran, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made two key interim military appointments.

Through an executive order, Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has been appointed as the acting Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), replacing General Hossein Salami.

Meanwhile, Admiral Habibullah Sayyari has been named the temporary Chief of Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces.

Israel targeted Iran’s nuclear facilities, ballistic missile factories and military commanders on Friday at the start of what it warned would be a prolonged operation to prevent Tehran from building an atomic weapon.

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Hossein Salami, the chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards corps, was killed and the unit’s headquarters in Tehran had been hit. Several children had been killed in a strike on a residential area in the capital, it said.

Iran’s military chief, Mohammad Bagheri, was also killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight.

Israel has claimed that several high-ranking military officials and nuclear experts were killed in the initial phase of its operation.

The strikes, which hit multiple areas in and around Tehran as well as other cities, seem to be aimed at dismantling Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a statement that Israel had “unleashed its wicked and bloody” hand in a crime against Iran and that it would receive “a bitter fate for itself”.

The Supreme Leader said a number of commanders and scientists were assassinated in the strikes. “Their successors and colleagues will immediately pick up their work.”