Brigadier General Ali Mohammad Naini was the high‑profile spokesperson and deputy for public relations and publications of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), killed in a joint US–Israeli airstrike on March 20, 2026. The IRGC confirmed his death in a statement, calling the attack a “criminal cowardly terrorist act” by the “American‑Zionist” side, and describing Naini as a senior strategic and media figure in the corps’ hierarchy.

Naini, born in 1957, had more than four decades of experience in the IRGC’s ideological, cultural and “soft‑war” apparatus, long before formally becoming its official spokesperson in July 2024. He was a key architect of the IRGC’s psychological‑warfare, propaganda and cognitive‑operations doctrines, having held earlier posts such as the corps’ cultural deputy and the Basij’s cultural and social deputy, where he shaped messaging and ideology campaigns.

In his public‑facing role, Naini frequently appeared on Iranian state media, articulating the IRGC’s threats to the US, Israel and their allies while defending the group’s missile and naval capabilities amid a wave of counter‑strikes. He had recently dismissed claims by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran’s military and missile industry had been significantly degraded, saying Iran’s missile production was running at full capacity and even challenging the US to test Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz.​

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Alongside his military‑media duties, Naini was a professor of social sciences at Imam Hossein University, a key institution for training IRGC officers, blending academic work with operational‑level strategy. He had also chaired the board of the conservative Javan newspaper and held policymaking roles in major IRGC‑linked outlets such as Fars and Tasnim, further cementing his influence over the Islamic Republic’s strategic narrative.

Naini’s death in the US–Israel strike is widely viewed as a major blow to the IRGC’s command‑and‑control and propaganda machinery, precisely because he bridged hard‑power operations and mass‑media messaging. Western‑linked sanctions databases had already listed him as a targeted IRGC official, underscoring his role in psychological warfare; his killing in such a high‑profile raid points both to his symbolic importance and the intensity of the current US–Iran–Israel conflict.

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