Marzieh Hadidchi Dabbagh, the First Female Commander of the IRGC, Passes Away

Marzieh Hadidchi, known as Tahereh Dabbagh, one of the founders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the first female commander of the IRGC, passed away on Thursday, November 18, at the age of 77. According to Iranian media, Ms. Dabbagh had been hospitalized a few days earlier due to heart disease and died at Khatam al-Anbia Hospital in Tehran. Marzieh Hadidchi Dabbagh began her political activities in the years leading up to the 1979 revolution. After being arrested twice and experiencing imprisonment during the Pahlavi era, she left Iran using a fake passport under the name 'Zeynab Ahmadini-Nili' and made her way to the residence of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in Neauphle-le-Château, Paris. According to Ms. Dabbagh, she was responsible for protecting Ayatollah Khomeini during that time and managed the internal affairs of his residence. She returned to Tehran a few days after Ayatollah Khomeini's arrival in Iran in February 1979. She is remembered as one of the founders of the IRGC and held the command of the IRGC in Hamadan Province. Other activities of Ms. Dabbagh in this area included her role in the 'Sister's Basij' organization. She also had a record of overseeing women's prisons in Tehran. This female IRGC commander served as a representative of Tehran and Hamadan in three terms of the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majlis). Her other political and party activities included membership in the central council of the Islamic Revolutionary Women's Society and serving as deputy secretary-general of the Islamic Republic Women's Society. Marzieh Hadidchi was among the three-member group that, along with Ayatollah Abdullah Javadi Amoli and Mohammad Javad Larijani, delivered Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's message to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in 1988.