Senior Iranian officer dies, leaving questions about his death

The death of a senior Iranian military officer at his home in a Tehran suburb a week ago has fueled conflicting reports that he fell from a balcony, committed suicide or was killed.
The officer, Col. Ali Esmaelzadeh, died about a week after another high-ranking officer in the same unit, Col. Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, was killed in a drive- shooting in Tehran.
Their deaths come amid a new wave of heightened tensions between Iran and Israel, which for years have conducted a clandestine war of sabotage and targeted killings.Best of Express PremiumPremiumPremiumPremiumPremium
Both officers were high-ranking members of an elite secret detachment of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Unit 840, which Israeli officials say is tasked with killing foreigners abroad.
Iran blamed Israel for the killing of Khodayee, the deputy commander of the unit, and Israel told American officials that it was behind the killing, according to an intelligence official briefed on the communications.
But two senior Israeli defense officials said Friday that Israel did not kill Esmaelzadeh. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
The death of Esmaelzadeh was first reported Thursday the Saudi-financed, London-based Persian television channel Iran International. The report, citing anonymous sources in Iran, said that Revolutionary Guard officials suspected Esmaelzadeh of spying for Israel and staged his suicide.
The New York Times could not verify that claim, and Iranian and Israeli officials declined to comment. One official Iranian news outlet said that report was false.
But Iranian news media have offered conflicting reports on Esmaelzadeh’s death.
Sabreen News, an outlet affiliated with the Quds Forces, reported Thursday that Esmaelzadeh died after falling off the balcony of his home in Karaj, Iran, under “suspicious circumstances.” The report said that investigations were underway.
Iran’s official news agency, IRNA, said that Esmaelzadeh had died after “an accident” at his apartment and denied that he had been killed.
A news platform on the Telegram app affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, Ammariyon, initially reported that the colonel had been assassinated, then deleted the report and said he had committed suicide jumping off the balcony.
The Tasnim news agency, also affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard, reported Friday that Esmaelzadeh had fallen off the balcony because it did not have appropriate guard rails and that the coroner’s office had confirmed the cause of death.
There were other unusual circumstances surrounding his death that raised red flags for some Iranians.
Esmaelzadeh was a high-ranking officer in an elite unit, but Iranian news media did not report the death for more than a week, until London-based Iran International did.
The Revolutionary Guard have not issued a statement or offered public condolences to the family, standard procedure for a fallen officer.
The funeral was held under a media blackout in a remote village in his native province of Hamedan, according to flyers for the event posted on social media — not, as would be customary, at Tehran’s main cemetery with news coverage and officials in attendance.
For three days after Esmaelzadeh’s death, security guards swarmed his neighborhood in Karaj, according to an Iranian reporter who was there and asked not to be identified.
The confusion has led some Iranians, including conservatives, to question the competing narratives.
“Who had the power to carry out the killing of Colonel Esmaelzadeh and why?” tweeted Attaollah Husseini, a conservative veteran of the armed forces.
“It is impossible for IRGC members, who are on the path of martyrdom all their lives, to commit suicide,” tweeted Abbas Qaidari, a researcher on Iran defense policy in Toronto. He added that if the Revolutionary Guard were suspicious of someone, they would arrest and interrogate him. “The clues are elsewhere,” he said.
The deaths of the two officers of Unit 840 were not the only murky deaths in Iran in the past two weeks. On May 25, a drone attack damaged a military site outside Tehran where Iran develops missile, nuclear and drone technology and killed a Defense Minry engineer.
There was no claim of responsibility for the attack, but it fit a pattern of previous Israeli strikes.
Iranian officials have pledged to take revenge on Israel for the killing of Khodaei last month, prompting Israel to warn its citizens against traveling to countries in the region where Iran may have operatives.
Prime Miner Naftali Bennett of Israel said in a speech Sunday that Iran had carried out terrorism through proxies against Israel for years but that “the era of immunity for the Iranian regime is over.”
Iran’s deputy foreign miner, Ali Bagheri Kani, shot back Friday, telling a reporter in Norway, “The Zions may only be able to dream of striking Iran — and if that happens, it will be a dream from which they will never wake up.”