Iran's Revolutionary Guard announces replacement of intelligence chief

Iran's Revolutionary Guard has replaced its intelligence chief Hossein Taeb, who had held the position for more than 12 years.

"The Guards' chief Major General Hossein Salami appointed General Mohammad Kazemi as the new head of the IRGC Intelligence Organisation," Revolutionary Guard spokesperson Ramezan Sharif said in the statement on Thursday.

Salami also appointed Taeb, who is a cleric, as his own adviser, according to the statement.

The replacement of the intelligence chief comes after the killing of a number of members of the Revolutionary Guard, which is designated as a "terrorist group" by Iran's arch-enemy the United States.

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String of incidents

Iran and US ally Israel have been engaged in a years-long shadow war but tensions have ratcheted up following a string of high-profile incidents Tehran has blamed on the Israeli state.

On June 13, Ali Kamani, a member of the aerospace division, was killed while on a mission in Khomein in the central province of Markazi, the Revolutionary Guard said in a statement without elaborating.

Earlier in June, Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh, a commander of the Revolutionary Guard's external operations unit, the Quds Force, died "in an accident in his home", according to state news agency IRNA.

And on May 22, Revolutionary Guard Colonel Sayyad Khodai, 50, was killed outside his home in the east of the Iranian capital by attackers on motorbikes who shot him five times.

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