CNN
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Iran’s highest-ranking military officer, the head of its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and its air force and a former national security chief have all been killed in Israel’s unprecedented Operation Rising Lion.
Their deaths will send shockwaves through the nation’s military establishment and could seriously hamper the Islamic Republic’s ability to respond to Israel’s attacks. Here’s what you need to know about them.
As the head of the secretive Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami, was one of the most powerful men in Iran, overseeing its most potent military arm and reporting directly to its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Born in 1960, according to a US sanctions docket, Salami had headed the secretive and IRGC since 2019.
The position saw him helming one of the most powerful tools wielded by the Iranian state, which has been instrumental in crushing dissent at home and projecting Iran’s power abroad.
Analysts say the IRGC funds and supports a vast network of militias across the region which it uses to strike at US and other military personnel across the Middle East.
The IRGC is also believed to provide materials and support to Yemen’s Houthis, enabling the group to strike international shipping in the Red Sea and launch missiles and drones at Israel.
Salami was at the helm of the IRGC when Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel in April and October last year, in the first direct strikes by Iran on Israeli territory.
In footage released by Iranian state media in January, Salami was seen inspecting what the media said was an underground military facility that had played a role in those attacks.
Wearing a green military uniform and short beard, Salami took the salute of soldiers in the cavernous underground complex and walked over the United States and Israel flags on the ground.
The site was now manufacturing “new special missiles,” semi-official Iranian media outlet Mehr News reported.
Salami was head of the IRGC when it shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet shortly after it took off from Tehran’s international airport, killing all 176 people on board.
An unnamed IRGC commander of the Tor M1 surface-to-air missile defense system that shot down the plane was sentenced to 13 years in prison, according to Iran’s Mehr news outlet.
CNN’s security analyst Beth Sanner said that removing Salami is akin to taking out the US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: “You can imagine what Americans would do,” she said.
Since 2016 Mohammad Bagheri had served as the chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, which IISS estimated could call on more than 500,000 active personnel.
The General Staff is “the most senior military body in Iran, which implements policy and monitors and coordinates activities within the armed forces”, according to a US Treasury document laying out sanctions against Bagheri in 2019.
Bagheri was sanctioned along with nine others close to Ayatollah Khamenei “who have for decades oppressed the Iranian people, exported terrorism, and advanced destabilizing policies around the world,” the document said.
Photos published by Iran’s Tasnim news outlet showed him allegedly meeting with Iranian troops fighting on the ground alongside government forces in Syria in 2017.
In April Bagheri met Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman Al Saud in Tehran, in a rare visit by a senior Saudi royal to the Islamic Republic.
The next month Reuters reported that during the meeting the Saudi defense minister had delivered a warning to Bagheri: take President Donald Trump’s offer to negotiate a nuclear agreement seriously because it presents a way to avoid the risk of war with Israel.
Ali Shamkhani was a close aide to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and represented Tehran at talks which sealed a landmark agreement to restore diplomatic ties with foe Saudi Arabia.
Iranian state TV network IRINN confirmed his death following Israel’s unprecedented strikes on Friday.
Shamkhani served as the country’s top national security official for a decade from 2013, and before that served in a number of important roles, including in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the ministry of defense.
He had been a rising star of Iranian diplomacy, well known in foreign-policy circles in Washington and Europe.
Shamkhani represented Iran in China-brokered talks with Saudi officials that led to the two countries agreeing to re-establish diplomatic ties after years of hostility.
But he was abruptly replaced in mid-2023.
The former national security chief was ambitious, experts say, and had an extensive portfolio. He ran for president in 2001 to held key posts in the IRGC and the defense ministry. Some analysts suggested at the time that Khamenei may have thought him too ambitious.
Still, he remained a close aide to the supreme leader, and gave advice as Iran re-entered nuclear talks with the administration of US President Donald Trump.
In April, days before talks with the US, he warned Tehran could expel UN nuclear inspectors and cease cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) if it feels under threat.
The death of Amir Ali Hajizadeh, commander of the IRGC’s Air Force, is a major blow to Tehran.
Hajizadeh headed the country’s missile program, which was involved in defending the country’s air space and carrying out attacks overseas.
Hajizadeh was the mastermind of Iran’s previous attack on Israel in April 2024 as well as the missile attack on a US base in Iraq in 2020.
The Israeli military said Hajizadeh was killed alongside other senior air force leaders in a strike as they gathered at an underground command center.
