Brigadier General Ali Nasiri, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Protection Bureau, is said to have fled to the West after a fallout with the representative of the Supreme Leader in the IRGC.
On Thursday, April 11th, during a meeting among the senior IRGC intelligence officials, Nasiri and Hossein Taeb, the representative of the Supreme Leader to the IRGC came to blows. The following days, when Nasiri failed to show up for work, it was revealed that he had actually left the country.
Nasiri, already commander of the Seyyed al-Shohada unit of the Guards in Tehran Province, was appointed in 2017 by Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The website of the Al-Mayadin news agency which is affiliated with the Lebanese Hezbollah posted the news without much detail on Saturday, April 13, but removed it only after half an hour.
Nassiri is said to have gone to a US embassy in one of the Persian Gulf countries while carrying important strategic documents, seeking political asylum. The IGGC’s Protection Bureau was established in 1984, to oversee aviation and flight security (hijacking and bombing), as well as protection for regime and government officials, and foreign dignitaries visiting Iran.
On Friday, April 19, without referencing Nasiri, the state-run Fars News Agency, reported: “By the decree of Maj. Gen. Jafari, the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Brigadier General Fathollah Jomayri was appointed head of the Protection Bureau of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.” Jomayri was previously, commander of the Imam Sadiq Guards Unit of Bushehr Province, as well as the al-Ghadir Guards Unit of Yazd Province.
In an attempt to contain the rumor, the regime’s spin doctors are now claiming that Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran dismissed Nasiri. A source inside the regime told Iranian media members: “Following the leak of classified documents and information to Israel and the US regarding Iran’s nuclear program and secret missile bases, Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander in chief of the IRGC, under Khamenei’s order, dismissed Ali Nasiri, commander of the IRGC security.”
Source » isicrc