5th Nasr Division ( fa, لشکر 5 نصر, or ''lashkar-5-Nasr'') is one of the Divisions of

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC; fa, سپاه پاسداران انقلاب اسلامی, Sepāh-e Pāsdārān-e Enghelāb-e Eslāmi, lit=Army of Guardians of the Islamic Revolution also Sepāh or Pasdaran for short) is a branch o ...

. It is also known as the ''Sepah-e Nsar Corps''.

Formation and the Iran–Iraq War

The unit was formed from troops of Khorasan province in 1982 during the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council ...

before the preliminary moves of Operation Dawn. Its first commander was Hassan Bagheri Afshardi. Hassan Bagheri was in charge of the division for only 10 days before being killed in action. At the start of 1983, under the command of Morteza Ghorbani, the division took part in the capture of Mehran during Operation Dawn-3. The division went on to take part in Operations Badr, Memak, Dawn-8, Karbala 4 and Karbala 5. Commanders during this time included

Esmail Qaani Esmail Qaani (also spelled as Ismail Qaani fa, اسماعیل قاآنی or ; born 8 August 1957) is an Iranian brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of its Quds Force — a division primarily responsible for ex ...

and

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf or Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf ( fa, محمد باقر قالیباف, born 23 August 1961) is an Iranian conservative politician, former military officer, and current Speaker of the Parliament of Iran since 2020. He held of ...

Subsequent history

After the Iran–Iraq War, the unit was based in

Mashhad Mashhad ( fa, مشهد, Mašhad ), also spelled Mashad, is the List of Iranian cities by population, second-most-populous city in Iran, located in the relatively remote north-east of the country about from Tehran. It serves as the capital of R ...

, near the border with Afghanistan. Alongside the Hekmatyar network, under the leadership of Brigadier Gholamreza Baghban the division played a role in the exfiltration of

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

's fighters and family from Afghanistan in the aftermath of the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Former commanders

References

{{Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Military units and formations of Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution Divisions of Iran