Hossein Hamedani, a top Iranian commander, was killed Friday by Islamic State as Iran continued to ramp up its involvement with Syria, according to the Atlantic. President Hassan Rouhani said Hamedani was a martyr and said his death is a big loss. Hamedani was in Aleppo Province advising Syria's military when killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gained control of Aleppo's surrounding territories, according to Gulf Magazine, despite Russia's targeted airstrikes of the rebel group.
A top general in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hamedani said at a council meeting in 2014: "Today we fight in Syria for interests such as the Islamic Revolution. Our defense is to the extent of the Sacred Defense." Sacred Defense references Iran's eight-year war against Iraq in the '80s.
Hamedani's "death illustrated both the level of Iran's direct involvement on the government side in the Syrian civil war, and the pervasive violence of the conflict," according to the New York Times.
Iran has been supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad both economically and with intensive military assistance as Syria has so far lost more than 250,000 people in this ongoing civil war, with millions more driven out of their native country into Europe.
