A raid blamed on Israel targeted the consular section of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday, killing eleven people, including seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards, in a tense regional context in the midst of war in the Gaza Strip. Tehran has vowed to retaliate for the unprecedented raid on an Iranian diplomatic building in Syria, where Iran and its allies support the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, and Russia has requested a UN Security Council meeting which should be held on Tuesday.
“The Israeli enemy launched airstrikes from the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting the Iranian consulate in Damascus,” the Syrian Defense Ministry said. “This crime will not pass without the enemy being punished”, threatened the Lebanese Hezbollah, supported by Iran, invoking a “revenge” to come. An AFP journalist noted that the consular section, which adjoins the Iranian embassy in the Mazzeh district of Damascus, where many embassies and United Nations buildings are located, had been completely destroyed.
“Eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese, all fighters, no civilians”
“All those inside were killed or injured,” the ministry continued. The Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, announced that seven of its members, including two commanders, were killed in the raid. In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards confirmed that two senior officers of the Quds Force, Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, were among the victims.
The Quds Force is the elite unit of the Guardians which intervenes beyond borders. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), an NGO based in the United Kingdom, but which has a vast network of sources in the country, for its part reported eleven deaths in total: “eight Iranians, two Syrians and a Lebanese, all fighters, no civilians.”
The NGO specified that General Zahedi was the “commander of the Quds force for Syria, Lebanon and Palestine”. Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Tuesday that the Swiss charge d’affaires, which represents the interests of the United States in Iran where it does not have an embassy, had been summoned.
“An important message was sent to the American government, since it supports the Zionist entity. America must take its responsibilities,” underlined the minister quoted by the Iranian agency Irna. The United Nations Security Council will hold a public session on Tuesday at Russia’s request on this attack, announced Russian representative to the UN Dmitri Polianski, cited by the state agency Tass.
“After the Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, the Iranians asked the United Nations Security Council to condemn this action. In response to the Iranians’ letter, we requested a public meeting of the United Nations Security Council united” which was scheduled “on April 2 at 3 p.m. New York time” (7 p.m. GMT), he wrote on Telegram according to the agency.
“Decisive answer”
In Tehran, the Iranian Nour news agency reported that “Hossein Akbari, ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, as well as his family, were not injured during the Israeli attack.” In a statement broadcast by Iranian media, the ambassador said the embassy annex had been targeted by “six missiles fired by F-35 fighters.”
He assured that Iran would provide “a decisive response” to this attack. The Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, for his part, called on “the international community” to provide “a serious response” to the Israeli strikes. Asked Monday evening about this raid during a press conference, the spokesperson for the Israeli army, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, replied that he “does not comment on information from the foreign press”.
By condemning the “Zionist terrorist aggression”, the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas denounced a “flagrant violation of international law” and a “dangerous escalation”. And Russian diplomacy described the attack as “unacceptable”, accusing the Israeli army of being responsible and warning of “extremely dangerous consequences” for the region. Since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, fears have been growing that the conflict will take a regional turn, with Iran’s allies in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and the rest of the region having mobilized in favor of Hamas.
Significant damage
The consular annex was reduced to a state of ruin and only the entrance door remained, bearing the words “consular section of the Iranian embassy”, according to the AFP journalist who saw gutted furniture. among the rubble. The targeted building adjoins the Iranian embassy, the front of which is decorated with a huge portrait of Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds force and architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 in a US drone attack in Iraq.
The windows of buildings up to 500 meters away were broken and a large number of cars damaged. At the end of the evening, smoke was still emerging from the remains of the targeted building, while Syrian security forces were deployed in force in the capital and established checkpoints.
“We strongly condemn this heinous terrorist attack” which killed “a number of innocent people,” declared Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, who rushed to the scene, in a statement carried by the official Sana agency. Many Iranian military officials have been targeted in the past by strikes in Syria.
Monday’s raid is the fifth to target Syria in eight days. At the end of December, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, a key commander of the Quds Force, was killed in a missile strike south of Damascus. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in neighboring Syria against Syrian government positions, pro-Iranian groups, such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and Iranian military targets since the start of the war in that country in 2011. The strikes have intensified since the start on October 7 of the war between Israel and Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah and Iran. At the same time, Israeli strikes target Hezbollah officials in Lebanon, from where the pro-Iranian Shiite formation carries out attacks against Israel.