Iran, alongside Hizbullah, voiced a promise to strike back on Tuesday following an alleged Israeli aerial attack on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, which claimed the lives of seven officers of the Revolutionary Guard, incorporating two high-level commanders. Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi, underscored that Monday’s strike on the Syrian capital wouldn’t remain unavengeed, as the nation’s security council convened over the assault and fiercely criticised what it termed “Israel’s newest war crime against an international mission enjoying diplomatic immunity.”
Israel was accused by Hizbullah, the Lebanese militia supported by Iran that’s regularly engaged in missile exchanges with Israel, of engineering the “assassination” of the Guard personnel, signalling “retaliation and vengeance”. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres also declared his disapproval of the strike, which signified an important intensification in the turmoil that has consumed the region since Hamas initiated an assault on Israel on October 7th.
Iranian representatives have declared their opposition to an outright confrontation with Israel and the United States, their ally, but some analysts implied that the diplomatic mission strike might push Tehran to act, provoking a wider conflict. Israel, generally reticent about affirming or refuting assaults on Iran-affiliated targets, has declined to comment on the strike, which coincided with an Israeli hit on a humanitarian convoy in Gaza, costing the lives of seven international aid workers from World Central Kitchen.
Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed Iran’s intention to make Israel “lament executing this crime and others”. Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, conveyed that the strike indicated Israel’s desperation following “failures against the Axis of Resistance”; a phrase referring to the chain of militant factions spread across the region, inclusive of Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen. He also suggested that “[Israeli prime minister Binyamin] Netanyahu has completely lost his mental equilibrium due to sequential failures in Gaza and a failure to realise Zionist aspirations.”
The conflict between Israel and Hamas has exacerbated hostilities throughout the region. Along with the escalating friction between Hizbullah and Israel, Houthi rebels in Yemen have been assaulting commercial vessels in the Red Sea, while Iran-backed militants have been launching missile and drone strikes against US troops in Iraq and Syria.
Whilst Tehran has been endeavouring to reduce hostilities with Washington, following an assault on a US military base situated on the Jordanian-Syrian boundary in January using a drone, this assault resulted in the deaths of three soldiers. Further assaults on US bases in Iraq and Syria have significantly decreased since then.
High-ranking officials from both the US and Iran have begun engaging in indirect negotiations, with both nations making overtures to pacify the situation. In addition to these discussions, the US has also initiated diplomatic initiatives between Israel and Lebanon with the goal of halting any further confrontation along their mutual border, averting a potential escalation into full-scale warfare. However, concerns have arisen that these diplomatic efforts might become jeopardised due to the attack on Monday.
Ali Shamkhani, who is a top advisor to the supreme leader, made a post on platform X stating that Israel, acting as a substitute military force for the US in the area, has acted foolishly with its assault on the Iranian consulate located in Damascus and therefore must bear the consequences. “Regardless of whether or not the US was aware of Israel’s plans ahead of time, this does not absolve the US from bearing the responsibility for this criminal act and its subsequent fallout,” wrote Shamkhani.
In the aftermath of Commander Qassem Soleimani’s assassination by the US in 2020, Brigadier General Mohammad-Reza Zahedi, the Guard’s commanding officer who was killed in Monday’s assault, had been taking on an increasingly critical role within the organisation, as per sources familiar with Tehran’s regional network of proxies.
Brigadier General Zahedi, according to a Hizbullah statement, has been instrumental in “furthering and elevating” the efforts of the resistance in Lebanon for a lengthy period, sharing their combined worries and obligations.
Since the beginning of the war against Hamas in October, several key Guard members have been killed due to suspected Israeli airstrikes in Syria. Over the recent years, Israel has conducted hundreds of attacks targeting entities connected to Tehran and its proxies throughout Syria, particularly given Iran’s decision to deploy troops to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the civil war.
Given the presence of Iranian military and Hizbullah fighters in Syria, Israel has frequently expressed concerns about the potential establishment of a new enemy frontline against the Jewish state.