The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards accused “Zionists” of assassinating a colonel earlier this month in Tehran, according to the Guards’ official website.

Colonel Sayyad Khodai, 50, was fatally shot outside his home in Tehran’s east on May 22 by assailants on motorcycles. According to official media, he was shot five times.

According to an official statement released by the Guards’ Sepah News website, the colonel was killed “by the most vicious people, the Zionists, and God willing, we will avenge his death.”

The general did not, however, use the term “Zionist regime”, routinely used by the Islamic republic as a direct reference to its arch-enemy Israel.

Iran had earlier blamed the killing on “elements linked to the global arrogance”, its term for the United States and Washington’s allies including Israel.

“The enemy pursued him (the colonel) from the heart of the White House and Tel Aviv for months and years, door to door and alley to alley to martyr him,” Salami added.

The New York Times reported last week that Israel has told the United States that the Jewish state was behind the killing of Khodai. The US daily cited an anonymous “intelligence official briefed on the communications”.

It was the most high-profile killing inside Iran since the November 2020 murder of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

State television had described Khodai as a member of the Quds Force, the elite unit of the Guards in charge of external operations.

The Guards, Iran’s ideological arm, described Khodai as a “defender of the sanctuary,” a term used to describe those who work for Tehran in Syria or Iraq.

Thousands of Iranians attended Khodai’s funeral on Tuesday before he was buried in the martyrs’ section of Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.