Iranian authorities have opened an investigation into the killing of Abdol-Hossein Mojadami, a local commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in the ethnic Arab-majority southwestern province of Khuzestan.

Officials say two gunmen carrying Kalashnikov rifles on a motorbike opened fire on Mojadami outside his house in the town of Darkhoveyn early Jan. 22. Judicial sources were treating the attack as a "special case" but said no arrests had been made.

While no group has claimed responsibility, the IRGC-linked Fars News Agency suggested that the "assassination" bore the hallmarks of similar attacks by an Arab separatist militant organization known as Al-Ahwazi.

A state TV report, quoted by several outlets, said Mojadami was also an officer of the Quds Force, the IRGC's powerful branch responsible for operations beyond Iran's borders, and had been an associate of Qasem Soleimani, the force's top commander who was assassinated in a US drone strike in Baghdad earlier this month. Mojadami, according to the same report, fought in Syria as a "defender of the shrine," a moniker the Islamic Republic uses in reference to soldiers dispatched to Syria to fight alongside Syrian armed forces propping up President Bashar al-Assad.