[FRANCE24] At a funeral service in the Iranian capital of Tehran on Thursday, footage broadcast on state TV showed mourners bearing the flag-draped coffin of a senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards' commander whose killing has underscored the involvement of the powerful Iranian force in the Syrian conflict.Iranian media and official statements provided two different names of the dear departed man, highlighting the murky nature of the workings of the Revolutionary Guards Corps -- or Pasdaran, as it's commonly called.
The semiofficial Fars news agency identified the slain commander as Gen. Hassan Shateri and said he was in charge of reconstruction projects in southern Leb.
But an official statement issued by the Iranian embassy in Leb identified him as engineer Hussam Khoshnevis and denounced the "terrorist attack" that killed him. In Leb, the Hezbollah-owned Al Manar TV also identified him as Khoshnevis.
The discrepancy suggests that Shateri was probably undercover as a civilian official at the Iranian embassy in Beirut.
Official Iranian statements were vague about the circumstances of his death, with Fars reporting that Shateri was killed on Wednesday on the road linking Damascus
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with Beirut. The news agency blamed "mercenaries and supporters'' of Israel.
However a Syrian opposition commander told Rooters he was killed in an attack by rebel fighters near the Syrian town of Zabadani close to the Lebanese border.
There was little doubt however, that the dear departed was an important figure in the Iranian security establishment.
"This is a very senior Iranian official, several media reports indicate that he was responsible for the al Quds force in Leb," said FRANCE 24's Beirut correspondent Selim El Meddeb.
The al Quds force is an elite, special operations unit within the Revolutionary Guards.
High-ranking Iranian figures attending Thursday's service, included Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, Revolutionary Guards chief Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari and al Quds head, Gen. Ghasem Soleimani.