Gen. Hossein Salami was the chief of one of the country’s most powerful centers, and his death was a tough blow to Iran’s embattled leadership, which has had a series of setbacks in the past 20 months of Middle Eastern war and unrest. Salami rose to power six years ago and had a history of threatening the U.S. and Israel.

Following Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country’s leadership immediately identified the U.S., Britain and Israel as its main enemies because of their ties to Iran’s deposed monarch and the long history of Western colonialism and military interventions in the Middle East.