Iran Revolutionary Guard general died in Israeli strike that killed Hezbollah leader, reports say

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A prominent general in Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard died in an Israeli airstrike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Iranian media reported Saturday.

The killing of Gen. Abbas Nilforushan marks the latest casualty suffered by Iran as the nearly yearlong Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip teeters on the edge of becoming a regional conflict. His death further ratchets up pressure on Iran to respond, even as Tehran has signaled in recent months that it wants to negotiate with the West over sanctions crushing its economy.

Nilforushan, 58, was killed Friday in the strike in Lebanon that killed Nasrallah, the state-owned Tehran Times reported. Ahmad Reza Pour Khaghan, the deputy head of Iran’s judiciary, also confirmed Nilforushan’s death, describing him as a “guest to the people of Lebanon,” the state-run IRNA news agency said.

Khaghan also reportedly said that Iran had the right to retaliate under international law.

The U.S. Treasury had identified Nilforushan as the deputy commander for operations in the Guard. It sanctioned him in 2022 and said he had led an organization “directly in charge of protest suppression.” Those sanctions came amid the monthslong protests in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini following her arrest for allegedly not wearing her headscarf, or hijab, to the liking of police.

Nilforushan also served in Syria, backing President Bashar Assad in his country’s decades-long war that grew out of the 2011 Arab Spring. Like many of his colleagues, he began his military career in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.

In 2020, Iranian state television called him a “comrade” of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the head of its expeditionary Quds Force who was killed in a U.S. drone attack in Baghdad that year.

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Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press