Hezbollah founder dies of coronavirus in Iran

Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a former interior minister and Iranian cleric who is credited with helping found Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, died of coronavirus Monday at the age of 75, Iranian media reported.

Mohtashamipour, who spent the past decade living in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf, died at a hospital in northern Tehran, the state-run IRNA outlet reported.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised Mohtashamipour’s “revolutionary services and important responsibilities during the Islamic Republic era,” according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

According to The Associated Press, Mohtashamipour helped create Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and during his time as the Iranian ambassador to Syria in the early 1980s, he played a key role in Hezbollah’s founding. He was suspected of involvement in Hezbollah’s bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut and the group’s truck bombing at the US Marine compound in the Lebanese capital in 1983.