Israeli air strikes destroyed a building belonging to the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing a senior commander in the Quds Force, the external military and intelligence service of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iranian state media reported on Monday. General Mohamad Reza Zahedi, 65, oversaw Iran’s covert military operations in Syria and Lebanon, Iranian officials said.He is among the senior most Iranian commanders believed to have been killed by Israel in a yearslong shadow war that has included assassinations of Iranian military leaders and nuclear scientists in Iran and in Syria.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the strike, but four Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that Israel had carried out the attack, targeting Zahedi. They did not confirm that he had been killed.
Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, strongly condemned the attack in a statement and said he had spoken to his Syrian counterpart about the “Zionist regime’s attack on the consulate section of the Islamic Republic’s embassy in Damascus.” “(Israeli PM) Netanyahu has lost his mental balance because he has faced back to back defeat in Gaza and has not achieved the Zionists’ ambitious goals,” he said.
The strike, an Iranian member of the Revolutionary Guards said, targeted a secret meeting in which Iranian intelligence officials and Palestinian militants gathered to discuss the war in Gaza. Among the Iranian officials were senior commanders in the Quds Forces and leaders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an armed group armed and funded by Iran.
The head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad Nakhaleh, was in Iran last week meeting with senior Iranian leaders.
Syrian and Iranian state news agencies reported that several people were killed in the strikes on Monday and aired video footage of the ruined building, the remnants of burned cars, shattered glass and debris covering the ground.
Israeli officials said the building in which the meeting took place was not a diplomatic office but the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guards, making it a military target without the same protections as the consulate itself. The NYT could not independently confirm whether the building was being used by the Revolutionary Guards.
Syria’s defence ministry said the strikes happened around 5pm (local time) when Israeli fighter jets entered Syria from the Golan Heights. Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, said in a statement released to state media that the consulate’s building came under attack by two F-35 fighter jets. Akbari said among those killed were several Iranian military advisers deployed to Syria. “This attack will have our fierce response,” said Akbari, according to Iranian media.