A spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its deputy of public relations, Ali Mohammad Naini, has been killed in strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel, Iranian state TV reported on Friday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not a conventional military force. It is the ideological backbone of the Islamic Republic © Mena Today
A spokesperson for Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its deputy of public relations, Ali Mohammad Naini, has been killed in strikes launched by the U.S. and Israel, Iranian state TV reported on Friday.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is not a conventional military force. It is the ideological backbone of the Islamic Republic, a parallel army created in 1979 specifically to protect the revolution and its values, operating alongside but largely above Iran's regular armed forces.
With an estimated 125,000 to 150,000 active personnel, the IRGC controls a vast empire that extends far beyond the battlefield. It runs major sectors of Iran's economy — construction, energy, telecommunications and finance — giving it financial independence from the state budget and making it virtually untouchable within the Islamic Republic's power structure.
Its Quds Force, the IRGC's external operations arm, is responsible for funding, training and directing Iran's network of regional proxies: Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and Shia militias across Iraq and Syria. It is, in effect, the instrument through which Tehran has projected power and destabilized the region for decades.
The IRGC has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States since 2019 — a designation that reflects its direct involvement in attacks on US forces and its role in some of the most destabilizing operations in the Middle East.
As the IRGC's spokesperson and deputy head of public relations, Naini was the organization's chief propaganda officer, the face and voice of Iran's most powerful military institution in the information war that has run parallel to the physical conflict.
His elimination removes a key figure in the IRGC's communications infrastructure at a moment when the organization's credibility is already under severe strain, following weeks of devastating US-Israeli strikes that have killed senior commanders, destroyed facilities and exposed the limits of Iran's much-vaunted military capabilities.
The IRGC built its reputation on secrecy, ideology and fear.
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