During a call with his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, considered the attack on an annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus “as a violation of all obligations and conventions international organizations, blamed the consequences of this action on the Zionist regime and stressed the need for a serious response from the international community to such criminal actions,” according to a ministry statement.
For the minister, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has completely lost his mental balance due to the successive failures of the Israeli regime in Gaza and the inability to achieve the ambitious goals of the Zionists.”
Hundreds of people demonstrate in central Tehran
In another statement published Monday evening, ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanani indicated that “the Islamic Republic of Iran” would “decide on the type of reaction and punishment of the aggressor.”
A few hundred people demonstrated in central Tehran on Monday evening, waving Iranian and Palestinian flags, calling for “revenge” and chanting slogans “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”, according to journalists of the AFP. American and Israeli flags were burned.
The raid completely destroyed the Iranian consulate, adjoining the embassy, and killed seven members of the Guards, including two commanders of the Quds Force for Syria and Lebanon, General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his deputy Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, announced the ideological army of the Islamic Republic in a press release. Aged 63, General Zahedi had been a member of the Guards Corps for four decades and held various senior positions, notably within the Quds Force.
Several Iranian “military advisors” have been killed in Syria since October 7
The Quds Force is considered the elite unit of the Guardians, which intervenes beyond the borders to, according to Tehran, help Iran’s neighbors and ensure the “stability” of the region against Western interference.
It was denounced by the United States, which placed the Guardians in 2019 on the “list of foreign terrorist organizations”. At the start of 2020, its charismatic leader, General Qassem Soleimani, was eliminated in an American raid ordered by former President Donald Trump near Baghdad.
Since the start of the war in Gaza on October 7, several Iranian “military advisors” have been killed in Syria, including General Sadegh Omidzadeh, head of intelligence for the Quds Force in that country, according to Iranian media.