Following the “large number of IRGC casualties in Syria, especially the death of General Hossein Hamedani, commander of the Iranian regime’s forces in Syria, and injury to Commander of the IRGC Quds Force (QF) Qassem Soleimani, Ayatollah Khamenei appointed IRGC Brigadier General Mohammad Jafar Assadi the IRGC commander in Syria,” the opposition group National Council of Resistance of Iran said.

The opposition council said that the guards’s elite “Quds Force” continues “its extensive dispatch of mercenaries to Syria and that Khamenei.. who considers defeat in the war against Syrian people a lethal blow to the entirety of the velayat-e faqih regime [governance by jurists] is getting the Iranian regime and its Revolutionary Guards exceedingly bogged down in the Syrian quagmire.”

It added that “Assadi is one of the most veteran commanders in the IRGC and a close associate of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, the Guards’ commander-in-chief. Assadi has many years of experience of involvement in the affairs of countries in the region. In Syria, he is known as Abu Ahmad.”

Assadi “joined the IRGC in March 1980 and was one of the commanders of the war with Iraq. 

He was commander of the IRGC in Lebanon from 2003 to 2007 and then commander of the IRGC Ground Forces from 2008 to 2009” according to the statement.