Not just Gaza. After the devastating attack on Friday in the Aleppo region, which caused 52 victims including Syrian soldiers and Hezbollah militiamen, the air force with the Star of David – even if the attack was not formally claimed – struck the Iranian consulate which It is located in the Mezzeh neighborhood of Damascus, right between the Tehran and Canadian embassies. The attack, the fifth Israeli attack in Syria in 8 days, occurred at 5pm local time, and razed the building, causing at least eleven victims (but the count is not definitive, because many bodies would be under the rubble) and one twenty injured.
Among the dead were Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, 83 years old, responsible for the operations of the Quods Force (the Iranian Pasdaran’s projection force abroad), his deputy Mohammad Hadi Raimi and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Hussein Amir Allah, an element of contact with Hamas. Also among the victims were two Iranian military advisors to the Syrian army and three members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
According to Iranian sources, Zahedi was meeting with a Palestinian Islamic Jihad delegation at the time of the attack. Zahedi, sanctioned by the UN and the governments of Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, was a hero of the war with Iraq and now commanded around four thousand Iranian Pasdaran committed to supporting the army of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and was also the link between his country and the Lebanese Hezbollah. The news of Zahedi’s disappearance was officially confirmed by Tehran.
Hossein Akbari, ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran in Damascus, remained unharmed and in a press conference shortly afterwards promised revenge. “The Zionist regime – he said – is acting against international law, so it will receive a harsh response from us. We will respond to the attack in the same way, at the right time and in the right place.” The Iranian ambassador claimed that the action was carried out “by F-35 fighter planes: the building was hit by six missiles which completely destroyed it”. “Targeting the Iranian consulate – said Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian – is a violation of international norms and Israel will have to bear the repercussions. I underline the need for a serious response from the international community to such criminal actions “.
“That of Mohammad Reza Zahedi – commented Tamir Hyman, the director of the INSS, the Israeli Institute for National Security Studies and former director of the National Security Agency, is the most important murder committed since that of General Qasem Soleimani (killed in 2020 in Iraq by an American drone, ed.). It appears that Iran is finally paying a price for being behind most of the offensive activity against Israel.”
It should be noted that last December 25 the Israelis eliminated Sayyed Reza Mousavi in Syria, at the time responsible for the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon. Israel has now raised the alert to the highest level for its diplomatic offices abroad, particularly in the Middle East, where an attack by drones launched by Iranian ‘proxies’ in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria or attacks with car bombs.
