Iran has vowed to retaliate after Israel bombed its consulate in Syria, killing at least 11 people including two Iranian generals and five officers, Iranian authorities have confirmed.
The deadly escalation in the region amidst Israeli military operations in Gaza, raising the risk of a wider Middle Eastern conflict. The strike marked a notable shift in Israel’s strategy, targeting not only military installations but also the vast embassy compound itself.
“We consider this aggression to have violated all diplomatic norms and international treaties”, Iran’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, said.
The airstrike was launched on April 1, 2024 from the occupied Golan Heights, with some missiles intercepted by Syria’s air defense systems, according to the Syrian state media.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad, who was seen at the site along with Syria’s interior minister, condemned the attack on Iranian consulate building in Damascus.
Who was killed in the Israeli airstrikes in Syria?
Several IRGC military advisers were in the building at the time of the attack and seven were killed, according to the IRGC statement.
The airstrike killed at least seven Iranian officials including Gen Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a top commander in Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC), and senior commander Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, according to Iran’s Foreign Ministry. Zahedi was the leader of the Quds Force of IRGC in Lebanon and Syria until 2016, it said.
The UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said as many as 11 people had been killed, including eight Iranians, two Syrians and one Lebanese, all of them fighters.
Hezbollah, mourning the loss of Gen. Zahedi, issued a statement offering condolences to Iran and warned Israel that such actions would not deter the “people’s resistance.” The group vowed that killing “will not pass without the enemy receiving punishment and revenge.”
Israeli reaction
The Israeli military refrained from commenting on the incident, neither confirming nor denying the reports.
While Israel did not officially acknowledge responsibility for the attack, an army spokesman said the embassy compound, in the central Mezzeh area of Damascus, was a military site “disguised” as a diplomatic site.
The attack underscored Israel’s increasing impatience with ongoing skirmishes with Hezbollah, an Iran-backed militant group based in Lebanon. Israeli military actions have also faced retaliation from Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen, who fired long-range missiles towards Israel on the same day as the consulate attack.
Iran vows revenge
Following the Israeli airstrike that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Damascus Iran vowed to retaliate. Iran’s Ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, emphasized that Iran’s response to the strike would be “at the same magnitude and harshness” as the attack on its consulate.
Tehran’s leadership labeled the attack on the diplomatic mission as unprecedented and promised a severe response.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi vowed on Tuesday to retaliate and “punish” Israel over the strike against Tehran’s embassy compound in Syria as the Gaza war spillover continues to expand across the region.
“The evil regime will be punished by the hands of our brave warriors. We will make them regret this crime and the like by God’s grace,” Iranian state media quoted Khamenei as saying.
Raisi said Israel “has put blind assassinations on its agenda in the struggle to save itself,” describing the strike as a “cowardly crime that will not go unanswered”.
Several countries condemn Israeli attack
Several Muslim nations including Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, along with Russia, have also condemned the Israeli attack.
“We strongly condemn this atrocious terrorist attack that targeted the Iranian consulate building in Damascus and killed a number of innocents,” said Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad who visited the scene of the attack along with Syria’s interior minister.
Russia also joined the condemnation. “We strongly condemn this unacceptable attack against the Iranian consular mission in Syria,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
In the United States, the State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters that Washington remained “concerned about anything that would be escalatory or cause an increase in conflict in the region”.