Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has announced the appointment of a new commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, the country's most important ideological force, days after the United States designated him a terrorist organization.

Khamenei issued a decree appointing General Hussein Salami, 59, as commander of the Revolutionary Guards instead of Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, who has led the guards since September 2007.

A statement issued by Khamenei said that he had given Salami - the former deputy commander of the Guards - a brigade rank before being appointed commander of the Guard, while General Jafari was appointed commander of another branch of the guard known as "the rest of God."

"Given the need for change in the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ... and in view of your competence and valuable experience in the public administration and your response to the various responsibilities in the revolutionary, jihadi and popular apparatuses of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, .

According to Khamenei's statement, Jafari himself asked for this change because he wanted to "be in the cultural field and play a part in the soft war."

Who is Salami?
General Salami was born in 1960 in Kelpikan and studied mechanical engineering at the University of Science and Industry.

Salami, who served as deputy commander of the Guard for nine years, took part in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war and led the Air Force to the Guards before taking over the command of his commander.

Salami advised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last October to "practice swimming in the Mediterranean because soon you will have no choice but to escape by sea."

"They (the Israelis) are not at the level of being a threat to us, Hezbollah is enough to destroy them," Salami was quoted as saying.

The Iranian television said that Salami said in January that the strategy of the Islamic Republic is to erase the "Zionist entity" from the political map.

Revolutionary Guards
The IRGC, according to estimates from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, has 350,000 members, while the Institute for Strategic and International Studies in Washington estimates that the number of its members is only 125,000.

The Revolutionary Guard is directly linked to the Supreme Leader and has special infantry, naval and air forces.

The Guard forces work in parallel with the Iranian regular army, whose mission is "to protect the Islamic Revolution and its achievements" and to "protect Islamic rule and spread its objectives abroad."

US President Donald Trump named the Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization on April 8, in an unprecedented move that sparked condemnation of Iran and fears of reprisals against US troops.

The Revolutionary Guard is responsible for Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. Tehran has warned that it has missiles with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers, putting Israel and US military bases in the region in the crossfire.