FLASH
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General Amir Ali Hajizadeh is the strategist of the Iranian air force, the officer who has long led the Pasdaran Aerospace Division and who, along with others, directed the retaliation against Israel.
Born near the capital in 1961, he fought against the Iraqis in the ranks of a special unit. Sharpshooter, then switched to artillery, then duties within a nascent outfit caught between sanctions and hardship.
The turning point in his career was determined by the meeting with a relevant high rank, Hassan Moghaddam, the colonel charged by the regime to develop the missile component. One article claims he was the one who involved Hajizadeh in a training mission to use Scud Bs of Libyan origin sent to Syria and shared, in training, with a small Pasdaran unit, Hadid. We are in 1984.
Since then, the officer's career has progressed through appointments and project management. Soldiers and scientists are encouraged to conduct research, buy technology abroad - one supplier is North Korea - and lay the foundations of a local industry to produce the arsenal "at home". In fact, despite an unfavorable international framework, the guardians manage to expand it on various lines: the development of carriers with a radius of at least 2 thousand kilometers, the creation of numerous "categories" of bombs, the development of drones, the protection of countries in which it can withstand a possible enemy attack.
A winding road, slowed down by obstacles, malfunctioning "pieces", sabotages and accidents that cannot always be explained unfortunately. The clearest proof of this is the death of Hassan Moghaddam himself, torn apart by an explosion inside a base where research was being carried out on the Shehab 3 missile, which was also "influenced" by North Korean ideas.
In a new hierarchical arrangement, Hajizadeh took over as head of the air force in 2009 and continued to oversee its expansion, minding the shield and the spear. To protect the national territory, to expand the capabilities, to provide adequate means for the Shiite militias in the Middle East.
Two years later the Iranians managed to shoot down a sophisticated American drone, the RQ 170, known as the Beast of Kandahar, a nickname associated with its sighting on the runway of the Afghan city. They capture it intact and will produce their own version then fielded.
Pasdaran are concerned with the construction of large bunkers to house strategic weapons, the so-called "missile city" was born. And then they use the systems to target Saudi oil facilities with the involvement of the Houthis, attack merchant ships linked to Israel, strike Baloch separatists in Pakistan and rebels in Syria, and promote the Axis of Resistance made up of radical factions. The devices are sometimes identical, they are renamed with local acronyms, but the "heart" is the same.
However, not everything shines on the officer's record. The Israelis have managed on several occasions to breach the defense perimeter, the material is not always adequate - even in Saturday's retaliation it seems that many devices fell due to failure or problems - and on January 8, 2020 one of its "batteries" shot down a Ukrainian passenger plane (176 casualties) near Tehran, a plane mistaken for an enemy in a tense phase after the killing of General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad by the Americans. A disaster that they tried to mask in the early days with imaginative theses.
It is easy to see why Hajizadeh was publicly cited by Tel Aviv as a crucial figure, to the point that some even pointed to him as a possible target of a targeted assassination. No less interesting are the analyzes that predict new recognition for the strategist, reward for what he has done in the service of the nation. True Promise's retaliation caused limited damage, but, as an Iranian source explained to the Financial Times, "it revealed that we are crazier than you think and ready to face all the consequences." A phrase from an anonymous person, therefore imperfect and contaminated by propaganda, but useful to understand the spirit of a part of the regime./ Corriere della Sera
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