Tensions between Iran and Israel are rising again. On Monday, December 25, at 4 p.m. local time, the highest-ranking officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, was killed in Damascus after firing “three Israeli missiles,” Tehran said. This targeted assassination is part of the undeclared war that the Islamic Republic and the Jewish State have been waging for two decades, exacerbated by the conflict in Gaza. Mr. Moussavi is the highest-ranking official in the “Axis of Resistance” eliminated by Israel since the death of Imad Moughniyeh, a key military leader of Hezbollah, Tehran's armed wing in Lebanon, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Damascus in 2008.
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Razi Moussavi was introduced by Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian as the Syrian regime's “anti-terrorism advisor” and was responsible for military coordination between forces allied with the Revolutionary Guards (Tehran's ideological army) in the region. Or the various pro-Iranian militias stationed in Syria and Iraq, but also the Lebanese Hezbollah, which confronts the Israeli army every day in support of the Palestinian Hamas. Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the Iranian regime has consistently used the term “advisor” to justify the presence of its military in the country, an ally of Tehran.
In an undated photo taken more than a decade ago and circulated in the last few hours on X accounts (formerly Twitter) close to the Iranian regime, Razi Moussavi, aka Seyyed Razi (seyyed, a term that defines one “Descendants” of the Prophet based on his family line). , in the nomenclature of the Islamic Republic), poses intently with Hassan Nasrallah, the secretary general of Lebanon's Hezbollah, whom he had known for more than 25 years. A second image broadcast by Iranian television shows him smiling with General Ghassem Soleimani, the former head of Iran's foreign operations until his assassination by the United States on January 3, 2020.
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“Strategic mistake”
At the time, the Iranian regime viewed his death as a humiliation. He then promised “violent revenge.” Tehran responded well, targeting an American base in Iraq but being careful to give the soldiers present time to seek shelter before bombing it. The attack, which was carried out with ballistic missiles, still left several dozen injured. On Monday, Razi Mousavi was killed just days before the fourth anniversary of Ghassem Soleimani's death, which could embarrass Tehran and reveal the vulnerability of its officials stationed abroad.
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