“Bury me next to my grandfather; I do not want a part of the martyr’s section for myself,” wrote Gen. Hamid Taghavi in his will. A veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, Taghavi had assumed his fate would be different from that of his brother and father, who were both killed in battle during that war.

But when Islamic State (IS) terrorists took over parts of Iraq this summer, destroying Shiite shrines and threatening to march on to Baghdad, Taghavi came out of retirement to work as an adviser to the Iraqi army, which was in retreat. He was killed by a sniper north of Baghdad in the city of Samarra, home of the al-Askari shrine.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced Taghavi’s death in Dec. 28 statement that read Taghavi “was martyred during his mission advising the Iraqi army and people’s forces to fight takfiri terrorists and [IS] in the city of Samarra near the shrine of Imam Askari.”

Before burying him in his hometown at the cemetery for martyrs in Ahvaz, the IRGC held a ceremony at its headquarters in Tehran for Taghavi’s funeral, which thousands attended. The head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, attended the funeral and IRGC head Mohammad Ali Jaffari sent a letter of condolence and praise.