Iran Revolutionary Guards say intelligence chief replaced

The replacement comes after the killing of a number of members of the Guards, which is designated as a terrorist group by Iran’s arch enemy the United States

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Thursday replaced its intelligence chief Hossein Taeb, who had held the position for more than 12 years, the Guards said in a statement.

“The Guards’ chief Major General Hossein Salami appointed General Mohammad Kazemi as the new head of the IRGC Intelligence Organisation,” Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif said in the statement.

Major General Salami also appointed Mr. Taeb, who is a cleric, as his own adviser, according to the statement.

The replacement of the intelligence chief comes after the killing of a number of members of the Guards, which is designated as a terrorist group by Iran’s arch enemy the United States.

Iran and U.S. ally Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war but tensions have ratcheted up following a string of high-profile incidents Tehran has blamed on the Jewish state.

On June 13, Ali Kamani, a member of the Guards’ aerospace division, was killed while on a mission in Khomein in the central province of Markazi, the Guards said in a statement without elaborating.

Earlier in June, Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh, a commander of the Guards’ external operations unit, the Quds Force, died “in an accident in his home”, according to state news agency IRNA.