Iran's Revolutionary Guard accused Israel of killing one of its commanders in an attack in Syria on Monday and vowed to avenge his death.
According to state television, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi was attacked by “three rockets” in the Sayeda Zeinab district south of Damascus. The station broadcast images of columns of smoke rising from the area of the attack, it was said.
When asked about this attack, the Israeli army replied that it “does not comment on information provided by foreign media.”
The Revolutionary Guards presented Razi Mousavi as “one of the most experienced advisers” to the Quds Force, the ideological army’s foreign operations arm and the Guard’s elite unit.
According to them, he was “the logistics manager of the resistance axis” in Syria.
Iran, which does not recognize the existence of Israel, sees itself as part of the “Axis of Resistance” against Israel in the Middle East, along with the power in Syria, the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Palestinian movement Hamas, Iraqi groups and the Yemeni Houthi rebels.
“Razi Moussavi was killed during an attack by the Zionist regime in Syria,” the Guardians said in a statement. “There is no doubt that the Zionist regime […] will pay for this crime.”
Razi Mousavi is the highest-ranking Quds Force commander killed outside Iran after General Qassem Soleimani, then the force's chief and a key figure in the Islamic Republic in the Middle East, was killed in a US strike in Iraq on January 3, 2020 became .
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 the frustration, helplessness and incompetence 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 Iran's Mehr Agency that “the general's house was attacked by three missiles from the Zionist regime in the afternoon, the building was destroyed” and the “body of a soldier was found in the yard.” .
The Quds Force has been on the US list of “foreign terrorist organizations” since 2019.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), which has an extensive network of sources in Syria, reported Israeli attacks on positions of Iranian groups and Hezbollah in the Sayeda Zeinab district, ten kilometers from Damascus.
Residents in the area said they heard loud explosions and saw columns of smoke rising over farms.
In early December, Iran announced the deaths of two Guards officers in Israeli airstrikes on Hezbollah sites, Israel's enemy.
Iran and Hezbollah have provided military support to Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime since the conflict in Syria began in 2011.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against neighboring Syria since 2011, mainly targeting Iran-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 backers of Hamas, whose unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7 triggered a war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement ruling in Gaza.
According to the latest official Israeli figures, the attack claimed around 1,140 lives in Israel, mostly civilians.
According to a recent report from the Hamas Ministry of Health, 20,674 people died in Israeli retaliatory operations in the Gaza Strip, most of them women, children and teenagers.