Israeli strike kills top Iranian missile commander and senior guards officials

Iran has acknowledged the death of the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s missile program along with seven other top leaders in an Israeli attack on Friday. The slain list contained the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Aerospace Division, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Gen. Mahmoud Bagheri, Gen. Davoud Sheikhian, Gen. Mohammad Bagher Taherpour, Gen. Mansour Safarpour, Gen. Masoud Tayyeb, Gen. Khosro Hasani, and Gen. Javad Jarsara.

This is said to have deeply disrupted the IRGC's top missile command and aerospace division. Apart from them, six other scientists were killed. Two of them were reported by Iranian media as nuclear scientists. Fereidoun Abbasi, a former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation and Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, a theoretical physicist, president of the Islamic Azad University of Iran, were among the six.

Notably, Abbasi had survived twin blasts in 2010 that killed his fellow nuclear scientists, Majid Shahriari. Iran accused Israel of the attack, which Israel didn't acknowledge.

Israel is selectively targeting the top command of Iran's military and nuclear project to reduce its potency and increase functional difficulty. Earlier, Iran's Revolutionary Guards chief Hossein Salami and armed forces chief of staff Mohammad Bagheri were killed in the Israeli operation.