Farewell, Dr. Seyyed Hossein Jabal Amelian, we hardly knew you

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Farewell, Dr. Seyyed Hossein Jabal Amelian, we hardly knew you

Precision munition-induced leadership flux: that’s our five-word summary of what’s happening to Iran’s SPND organisation as a consequence of the current conflict.

The opening salvo of 28 February which killed Supreme Leader Khamenei also took out senior Iranian officials including both the most recent head of SPND, Reza Mozafarinia, as well as the current head, Dr Seyyed Hossein Jabal Amelian.

We’d hardly had the chance to meet Dr Amelian (سید حسین جیل عاملیان, national ID: 1284561240), and thought that he deserved an obituary of sorts from the Internet’s number one source of SPND-related news, commentary, and sometimes-relevant memes.

Um, that’s us? So here we go.

First, Amelian was an IRGC man. As Amelian’s uniform in the image above shows, he was a second-class brigadier general (سرتیپ دوم پاسدار) of the IRGC, a one-star senior rank.

Amelian had spent his career working in the upper echelons of Iran’s Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). He had been head of the Marine Industries Organization (سازمان صنایع دریایی), MODAFL’s shipbuilding arm. He’d also headed the Defence Industries Training and Research Institute (DITRI/TRIDI/DIRTI aka مؤسسه آموزشي و تحقيقاتي صنايع دفاعي), the overarching MODAFL body responsible for research coordination which also oversaw Iran’s nuclear weapons programme during the pre-2003 AMAD era.

Amelian dabbled in academia, lecturing at MODAFL’s Malek Ashtar University and attaining a PhD. From Amelian’s research publication record, we can see that he claimed expertise in Russian-origin military technology and submarine systems.

To his credit, Amelian had managed to stay something of a grey man. He’d managed to never appear on a sanctions list. Nor did he chase publicity: unlike many of his peers, the number of photos of Amelian that appear online can be counted on one hand.

Still, don’t go looking to the IRGC’s ranks for saints. Amelian was likely as corrupt as the rest of his cohort.

That’s not just speculation, either. Corporate records show that Amelian was also a director of several MODAFL companies, including the Niru Battery Manufacturing Company (شرکت باتری سازی نیرو) and the Iran Aviation Industries Organisation (IAIO) (سازمان صنایع هوایی ایران). In the current Iranian military industrial system, directorship of revenue-producing companies like these ones is prized as a means of personal enrichment. We have few doubts that Amelian resisted the temptation on this front.

With Amelian dead, SPND will be in need of a new boss. Actually, perhaps we’ll need a few candidates – precision munition-induced leadership flux looks like it could remain a thing, but lets see how things unfold in the coming weeks. 

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