Iran’s Revolutionary Guards accused Israel of killing one of their commanders in a strike in Syria on Monday, and vowed to avenge his death.
According to state television, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi was targeted by “three missiles” in the Sayeda Zeinab neighborhood, south of Damascus. The channel broadcast images of columns of smoke rising, it said, from the area of the attack.
Asked about this strike, the Israeli army said it “does not comment on information from foreign media”.
The Revolutionary Guards presented Razi Mousavi as “one of the most experienced advisors” to the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the ideological army and the Guards’ elite unit.
He was “the logistics manager of the axis of resistance” in Syria, according to them.
Iran, which does not recognize the existence of Israel, considers itself along with the power in Syria, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Palestinian movement Hamas, Iraqi groups and the Yemeni Houthi rebels as part of the “axis of resistance” against Israel in the Middle East.
“Razi Moussavi was killed during an attack by the Zionist regime carried out” in Syria, the Guardians announced in a statement. “There is no doubt that the Zionist regime […] will pay for this crime.”
Razi Mousavi is the most senior Quds Force commander to be killed outside Iran, after General Qassem Soleimani, then head of the force and a key figure in the Islamic Republic in the Middle East, killed in a US raid in Iraq on January 3, 2020.
According to the official Iranian agency IRNA, he was a “companion” of Soleimani.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raïssi also accused Israel.
“This action is undoubtedly another sign of frustration, helplessness and incapacity of the usurping Zionist regime in the region,” he said in a statement. “He will certainly pay for this crime.”
Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, told the Iranian Mehr agency that “the general’s house was targeted in the afternoon by three missiles from the Zionist regime, the building was destroyed” and the “body of a soldier was found in the courtyard”.
The Quds Force has been on the United States’ list of “foreign terrorist organizations” since 2019.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which has a vast network of sources in Syria, reported Israeli strikes on positions of Iranian groups and Hezbollah in the neighborhood of Sayeda Zeinab, at a ten kilometers from Damascus.
Residents in the area said they heard loud explosions and saw columns of smoke rising above farms.
At the beginning of December, Iran announced the death of two Guards officers in Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah sites, Israel’s enemy.
Iran and Hezbollah have been militarily aiding the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against neighboring Syria since 2011, mainly targeting Iranian-backed militias, Hezbollah and the Syrian army.
He rarely comments on his operations in Syria, but says he wants to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on his doorstep.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the main international supporters of Hamas, whose unprecedented attack on October 7 on Israeli soil provoked a war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement in power in Gaza.
The attack left around 1,140 dead, mostly civilians, in Israel, according to the latest official Israeli figures.
According to a latest report from the Hamas Ministry of Health, 20,674 people died in Israeli military operations of retaliation in Gaza, the majority women, children and adolescents.