That certainly didn’t age well.
On Thursday, Major Gen. Hossein Salami — the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful branch of Iran’s armed forces set up by the theocratic regime after it took power in 1979 — was bragging on state media about how a recent haul of what he claimed were Israeli nuclear and military documents were proof Israeli intelligence was “permeable and threadbare,” claiming the haul would “enhance the country’s offensive capabilities.”
By Friday morning, he was dead, a victim of that “permeable and threadbare” Israeli intelligence.
The attack, The Wall Street Journal reported, “killed a number of Salami’s colleagues as well.”
“The attack echoed earlier strikes on meetings of the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and the Gaza Strip militant group Hamas that wiped out many of their top leaders, highlighting Israel’s intelligence capabilities and success at catching its enemies by surprise,” the outlet reported.
State-run Fars News Agency announced his “martyrdom” as the attacks — which were meant to paralyze Iran’s nuclear weapons program and military apparatus — occurred on Friday morning local time:
Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) Major General Hossein Salami, was martyred following a military strike by the Israeli regime targeting areas of the Iranian capital. …
According to official sources, the Israeli attacks occurred early this morning, during which multiple locations in Tehran were targeted by missile and drone strikes. In the course of this aggression, General Salami was martyred.
This came one day after the same news agency published this report of Salami’s remarks:
Will Iran retaliate?
Maj. Gen. Salami on Thursday praised the country’s intelligence ministry for retrieving a trove of classified Israeli nuclear and military documents, describing it as a strategic blow to the Zionist regime.
He said that the intelligence operation proved Israel’s security system “permeable and threadbare”, while showing Iran has the upper hand when it comes to intelligence.
“This was also an example of our victory in the intelligence warfare,” the top general added.
Quite a short-lived victory at that, it must be noted.
No one ought to shed a tear that Gen. Salami is no longer wasting carbon upon this earth. Here was a bombastic, anti-Western, anti-civilization ideologue who loathed both Israel and the United States.
Speaking last year, Salami said the United States “has targeted the entire Islamic world … it seeks to dominate all Muslims, hijack their cultural identities and seize their wealth. All Muslims are, therefore, in the same boat. If the enemy manages to infiltrate into a Muslim state, it will go on with others. Therefore, the path for aggressors to [advance their] dominance must be blocked.”
He went on to say that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror attack left Israel near “brain death,” a situation he quite liked.
“The most abhorrent regimes on earth are Israel and the U.S., which supports it,” he said. “Through U.S. military and political support and on the West artificial respiration, it [Israel] has been able to extend its existence which is coming to an end.”
Fittingly, then, Israel has put an end to his existence — although it’s worth noting his own people might not be too sorry, either. Salami and eight other IRGC officials faced sanctions by the European Union, among others, over their role in the 2019 crackdown on protests in Iran, according to Al Jazeera.
“Hossein Salami took part in the sessions that resulted in the orders to use lethal force to suppress the November 2019 protests. Hossein Salami therefore bears responsibility for serious human rights violations in Iran,” the European Union said in a statement in 2021.
And Salami was hardly alone; according to The Associated Press, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri — the chief of staff for the Iranian armed forces — was among the other big-name fatalities from Friday morning’s strikes.
However, none of the deaths were so right and proper as that of Salami — the man who spent Thursday crowing about the “permeable and threadbare” nature of Israeli intelligence only to be done in by it not even 24 hours later. Solid work, sir.
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