Head of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Killed in Plane Crash

DEBKAfile:

The small Falcon executive jet came down near Oroumieh, 900 km north of Tehran, according to an announcement from Iran’s state news agency.

DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources note the high importance of the dead commander who was appointed only three months ago. Another of the victims was head of the RG intelligence branch.

Kazemi, for six years chief of the RG air force, was one of the fathers of Iran’s aggressive military doctrine. Our Iran experts’ first premise is that the crash was engineered by opposition factions to president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad within the regime in an effort to stem the increasing encroachments of state institutions by his backers, the radical Revolutionary Guards.

There is no information on the “Israeli spy’s” identity. DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources suggest the purported capture may have been timed to coincide with the plane crash by the same group which sabotaged the plane to shift responsibility to Israel.