The strike killed senior commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hadi Haj Rahimi, together with 5 different officers, in line with an announcement from the IRGC.
“Iran reserves its official and inherent proper beneath worldwide legislation and the United Nations Constitution to take a decisive response to such reprehensible acts,” Zahra Ershadi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, wrote late Monday in a letter to the U.N. secretary normal.
Israel’s navy, which generally doesn’t affirm strikes in Syria, declined to remark.
Israel has carried out strikes in Syria in opposition to Iran and its allies for years and all through its six-month navy marketing campaign in opposition to Hamas in Gaza. However Monday’s assault stood out each due to its location — in a diplomatic compound, historically exempted from hostilities — and due to the seniority of the obvious goal.
Zahedi was recognized as the top of Iran’s Quds Drive in Lebanon in a 2010 Treasury Division sanctions announcement that accused him of taking part in “a key function in Iran’s help to Hizballah.” He acted as “a liaison” between the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Syrian intelligence and was “charged with guaranteeing weapons shipments,” in line with the Justice Division assertion.
In an announcement, Hezbollah eulogized Zahedi as an “exemplary sacrificer in his love for the resistance in Lebanon and the area” and warned that “this crime won’t cross with out the enemy receiving punishment and revenge.”
As head of the IRGC within the Levant, Zahedi ran day-to-day operations in Syria and Lebanon, in line with Arash Azizi, an Iran analyst and historian.
“IRGC management who’re on the entrance traces of the states neighboring Israel are high-value targets,” stated Azizi, “particularly these concerned in conducting operations with Hamas and Hezbollah.”
What makes Monday’s strike “escalatory and unprecedented,” Azizi added, is that “the constructing the place Zahedi and his colleagues have been hit is owned by Iran, and it’s subsequent to the embassy.”
Photos of the aftermath from Damascus on Monday confirmed thick clouds of smoke rising from {a partially} collapsed constructing that served because the consulate, adjoining to the Iranian Embassy.
“We strongly condemn this heinous terrorist assault,” Syrian Overseas Minister Faisal al-Miqdad stated, in line with Sana, Syria’s state information company.
The strike in Damascus adopted a drone assault in a single day within the southern Israeli metropolis of Eilat, later claimed by Iran-aligned militants in Iraq. Israel’s navy stated sirens sounded in Eilat on Monday after troops “recognized a suspicious aerial goal that crossed from the east towards Israeli territory,” in the end falling on a navy base. No accidents have been reported.
“A UAV made in Iran and directed by Iranians hit a naval base,” Israel Protection Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari stated Monday. “It’s a very critical incident.”
The IRGC was arrange within the wake of the 1979 Islamic revolution as a counterweight to the nation’s navy. A parallel safety drive that experiences on to Iran’s supreme chief, it has performed a central function in increasing the nation’s affect throughout the area, serving to information a community of allied militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen — described by Tehran because the “axis of resistance.”
By working via proxies, analysts say, the IRGC is ready to venture Iranian energy whereas conserving a strategic distance from the combat. However as its allies have ramped up their assaults in response to the conflict in Gaza — with Yemen’s Houthis firing on business ships within the Purple Sea; Hezbollah participating in near-daily exchanges of fireside with Israel in southern Lebanon; and Iraqi and Syrian militants concentrating on U.S. navy bases — the chance of a wider battle has grown.
Suspected strikes by Israel early Friday close to town of Aleppo killed dozens of Syrian troopers and a number of other members of Hezbollah, in line with a spokesperson for the militant group and Syria’s state information company. In late December, an Israeli strike outdoors Damascus took out an IRGC “senior adviser,” Iranian state media reported; one other member of the IRGC, reportedly in command of facilitating Iranian oil shipments to Syria, was killed in a strike alongside Syria’s Mediterranean coast in early March.
Ershadi, the U.N. ambassador, hinted darkly that Monday’s strike may “exacerbate tensions within the area and doubtlessly ignite extra battle involving different nations.”
The assault was swiftly condemned by Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, which signed a normalization settlement with Israel in 2020.
Regional officers instructed The Washington Publish in February that Iran had privately urged Hezbollah and different armed teams to train restraint in opposition to U.S. forces, not wanting to impress a bigger conflict. Analysts concern Monday’s assault may change Tehran’s calculations.
“We’re in a really harmful state of affairs now,” Azizi stated. Iran has “a shiny axis of resistance with fighters across the area, but when they will’t reply to Israel killing commanders one after one other, they clearly don’t have deterrence.”
Cate Brown contributed to this report.
