In a statement carried by the Guards’ Sepah News website, Tangsiri was said to have “succumbed to severe injuries” sustained in last week’s attack. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei expressed condolences in a message on Telegram
Iran's Navy Commander Admiral Alireza Tangsiri. PIC/AFP
Iran on Monday confirmed that an Israeli strike had killed the commander of the naval arm of the Revolutionary Guards, whom Israel had accused of overseeing operations to block the Strait of Hormuz.
In a statement carried by the Guards’ Sepah News website, Alireza Tangsiri was said to have “succumbed to severe injuries” sustained in last week’s attack.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has remained out of public view since assuming office following the killing of his father and predecessor in US-Israeli strikes on February 28, expressed condolences in a message on Telegram.
In his message, he described Tangsiri as “a soldier of Iran and a guardian of Islam” during the ongoing war.
According to Sepah News, Tangsiri’s funeral will be held on Tuesday in the port city of Bandar Abbas.
Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz had announced on Thursday that an Israeli airstrike killed Tangsiri, calling him the “man directly responsible for the terrorist operation of mining and blocking the Strait of Hormuz”.
Since the conflict, now in its second month, began, Iran has allowed only limited maritime traffic through the crucial waterway, contributing to a sharp rise in global energy prices.
West Asia conflict: Tehran vows retaliation
The Guards’ statement said Tangsiri had been organising coastal defences at the time of the strike and vowed that “we will not rest until the enemy is completely destroyed”.
He is the latest senior Iranian official whose death in the war has been confirmed by Tehran.
Supreme leader Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the conflict on February 28, while Iran’s influential security chief Ali Larijani was killed earlier this month, along with more than a dozen other prominent figures.
Katz had also said that other senior naval officers were killed in the same strike, though he did not provide further details.
Earlier in March, Tangsiri had pledged to “deliver the harshest blows to the aggressor enemy” while maintaining the strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz.
A veteran of the 1980–1988 Iran-Iraq war, Tangsiri was among the longest-serving senior figures in the force and one of its most prominent faces within Iran.
He was appointed in 2018 to head the Revolutionary Guards’ naval wing, which is tasked with defending the Islamic republic against internal and external threats.
Under his leadership, the Guards’ navy was significantly strengthened and in recent years had claimed responsibility for seizing several foreign vessels.
He was placed under US sanctions in 2019 under counter-terrorism measures.
While Israel and the United States have said the killings of senior officials have dealt a major blow to Iran, some analysts believe the country continues to show resilience and the ability to recover from setbacks.
(With AFP inputs)
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