Iranian soccer fans blew loud horns through a moment of silence for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Generals (IRGC) that Israel killed on April 1 during a Saturday soccer game in Tehran.
Fans blew loud horns, shouted boos and whistled loudly as players gathered at mid-field for the proposed minute of silence, a video Potkin Azarmehr posted to Twitter shows.
One minute silence in the football stadium in Iran for the top Qods Force commanders killed by Israel in Damascus turned into a minute of boos and jeers! pic.twitter.com/mp43be6pn5
— Potkin Azarmehr (@potkazar) April 7, 2024
During the game, which was between the Esteghlal and Mes Rafsanjan teams, according to a local reporter, fans were being asked to observe a moment of silence for seven members of the IRGC who were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria on April 1. The strike killed seven top IRGC officials, including Commander Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, according to Reuters.
Zahedi was a top commander in the IRGC QUDS force, an elite paramilitary offshoot of the Iranian military which retired General Stanley McChrystal called “an organization roughly analogous to a combination of the CIA and JSOC in the United States.” The U.S. State Department lists both the IRGC and the QODS as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. (RELATED: Israel-Iran Standoff Threatens To Put American Troops Back In The Crosshairs, Experts Say)
Zahedi was the highest-ranked Iranian commander to be killed since the U.S. took out Major General Qassem Soleimani in a 2020 airstrike under then-President Donald Trump.
Zahedi’s deputy, Brigadier General Mohamad Hadi Haji Rahimi, was also killed in the strike, according to Al Jazeera.