Filed under "Things That Make You Go Hmmmm..."
(INN) In the last few days, four senior former Revolutionary Guards officers have mysteriously died of sudden heart attacks and stroke, as reported by Iranian media.Opposition website hints men may have been murdered amid rising tensions within regime in Tehran.
(Ynet) Four Revolutionary Guard commanders died mysteriously of heart attacks and strokes over the past four days, an Iranian opposition website reported.
The website hinted that the commanders may have been murdered, this following the recent assassination of a nuclear scientist in Tehran and amid power struggles within the Iranian regime.
According to Saham News, which is affiliated with opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi, the commanders were identified as Wafe Afrian (52), Abbas Mahari (52), Ahmed Siafzadeh (55) and Mansour Turkan (53).
According to reports in Iran, Afrian died five days ago after battling a disease for the past few months. He served as a senior commander in the electronics warfare division.
Mahari, who died of a stroke, was a senior faculty member Imam Hossein University in Tehran and was linked to Iran's unconventional weapons program.
Siafzadeh, the former head of the Revolutionary Guards university, died of a heart attack, and Turkan, who served as a senior commander during the Iran-Iraq war, reportedly died of a stroke.
On Saturday media outlets in Azerbaijan quoted Iranian sources as saying that a 43-year-old Iranian military officer was shot to death by two motorcyclists in the city of Khorramabad.
Another soldier was injured in the incident. The two assailants fled the scene, according to reports.
The Mehr news agency said the killed mid-level officer was identified as Raze Ali Fimani.
Saturday's incident occurred just 10 days after Professor Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, an Iranian nuclear scientist, was killed when motorcyclists attacked a bomb to his car in northern Tehran.
In October 2010, 18 Revolutionary Guard members were killed and a number of others were injured during an explosion at a military base near Khorramabad, located some 480 kilometers (about 300 miles) southwest of Tehran.
Iran said the blast was the result of a fire in a munitions warehouse, but a few weeks later French daily Le Figaro speculated that Mossad was responsible for the explosion, which it claimed was part of a series of covert operations Israel launched to hinder Iran's nuclear program.
Tensions within the regime in Tehran have risen recently after former Revolutionary Guards commander Hussein Alaei published a letter that implicitly criticized the actions of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei around the controversial 2009 presidential elections.
Alai later announced that his article had been misinterpreted, but dozens of Khamenei supporters protested outside his home.
Former senior Guards members claimed the letter "played into the hands of Iran's enemies."
