A high-ranking general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards has died after an illness, Iran’s state TV reported Saturday.
General Vajihollah Moradi was one of the commanders of the Guards’ foreign wing, state TV said. He was also a comrade of General Qassem Soleimani, who was slain in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.
State TV said funeral preparations were underway and a funeral ceremony will be held in the northern city of Babolsar on Sunday.
Iran occasionally holds funerals for its soldiers fallen in Syria, although officials say Iranian forces are there only as advisers. This event highlights the continuous involvement of Iranian forces in the war-torn country.
In April, Iranian forces pulled out of bases in Damascus and southern Syria, moving away from the border with the Golan Heights — after suspected Israeli warplanes bombed Iran’s embassy in Damascus just weeks earlier. That strike killed an Iranian military commander and marked a major escalation in Israel’s war with its regional adversaries.
Iran is Syrian President Bashar Assad’s main regional supporter in the Arab nation’s lengthy civil war. Hundreds of Iranian forces have been killed in the war in Syria.
