The elite Iranian naval commander who authorized the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to ship traffic was killed in an Israeli airstrike along with the service’s top intelligence official, the Jewish state’s military announced Thursday.
Alireza Tangsiri, leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGC-N), was eliminated in an overnight strike on the fleet’s home port of Bandar Abbas, Defense Minister Israel Katz said during a morning assessment alongside military officials.
Tangsiri, 64, became the latest high-profile Iranian official to have been rubbed out after the assassinations earlier this month of IRGC spokesperson Ali Mohammad Naini, the regime’s de facto leader Ali Larijani, and Gen. Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the paramilitary Basij forces.
Katz said the strike was meant to send a “message” to the IRGC: “The IDF will hunt you down and eliminate you one by one.”
In a separate statement, Adm. Brad Cooper, the leader of US Central Command (CENTCOM), said Tangsiri’s death “makes the region safer” and called on members of the IRGC-N to “immediately abandon their post and return home to avoid further risk of unncecessary injury or death.”
“Since the commencement of Operation Epic Fury, 92% of the large ships in the Iranian Navy have been eliminated,” Cooper noted. “As a result, IRGC-N has completely lost their ability to project power in the Middle East or around the world. Now, with the loss of their long-time leader, the IRGC-N is on an irreversible decline.”
The Israel Defense Forces revealed later Thursday that the IRGC-N’s intelligence chief, Behnam Rezaei, was also eliminated in the strike along with the rest of the service’s top command, whose members were not immediately identified.
Tangsiri not only gave the green light to close the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which 20% of the world’s oil supply passes, but vowed to keep it shut after an order from the Islamic Republic’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei.
“In response to the order of the commander-in-chief, we will deliver the harshest blows to the aggressor enemy while maintaining the strategy of closing the Strait of Hormuz,” he had said.
The closure of the strait sent oil prices soaring past $100 per barrel, triggering worldwide economic uncertainty.
Tehran has threatened even more disruption, warning it could take control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait via its Houthi proxies in Yemen if US forces invade Kharg Island — which is one-third the size of Manhattan and handles 90% of Iranian crude oil exports.
The Bab al-Mandeb Strait is the world’s fourth-largest shipping route, connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. Around 12% of the world’s oil passes through this chokepoint.
“If the enemy wants to take action on land in the Iranian islands or anywhere else in our lands or to inflict costs on Iran with naval movements in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” Iran’s Tasnim News Agency reported, citing IRGC sources, “we will open other fronts for them as a surprise so that their action will not only be of no benefit to them but will also double their costs.
“The Bab al-Mandab Strait is considered one of the world’s strategic straits, and Iran has both the will and the ability to create a completely credible threat against it.”
Tehran leveled the threat after President Trump announced March 13 that CENTCOM “executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island.”
Iranian forces have increased air defenses and planted mines around Kharg Island amid fears of an invasion, Israeli outlet Ynet reported Wednesday.
An Israeli source warned that a US invasion would lead to American casualties because Iran would respond with drone attacks, the Jerusalem Post reported.
“The hope is that they won’t take that risk and will instead fire at the oil fields,” they said, “but there is no way to know.”
