Topline
Iran blamed Israel for an airstrike that destroyed its consulate compound in Damascus and killed an unconfirmed number of people, reportedly including a Revolutionary Guard commander, the latest escalation as tensions continue to build along Israel’s northern border while the war in Gaza drags on without a cease-fire.
Key Facts
Photos from the scene show a building in Damascus’s Mezzeh neighborhood completely leveled.
The strike killed General Mohammed Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Reuters reported citing Lebanese security sources.
The strike killed an estimated five to seven people, Iranian ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari told the state-run Fars News Agency.
The Israeli Defense Forces did not return a request for comment from Forbes, but four anonymous Israeli officials told the New York Times that the Israeli Defense Forces carried out the strike targeting the Iranian general—but did not confirm if he was killed.
Zahedi was reportedly meeting with leaders from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group in the Gaza Strip aligned with Hamas, sources told the Times.
Key Background
The strike on Monday comes as tensions continue to increase on Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria. The ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza has also sparked outbreaks of fighting between Israeli forces and Hezbollah, who are based in southern Lebanon. Both Hezbollah and Hamas are supported by Iran, as are other militias that have ramped up attacks on American forces, including the Houthi movement in Yemen and Khataib Hezbollah in Iraq. The U.S. State Department designated the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, part of Iran’s military arm, as a terrorist organization in 2019, and a U.S. drone strike killed senior commander Qasem Soleimani while he was traveling in Iraq in January 2020. On Friday, Israeli aircraft struck targets near Aleppo in northern Syria around 1:45 a.m. local time, killing an estimated 33 Syrians and six Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, Reuters reported. The same day, the IDF confirmed it killed Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, a senior Hezbollah commander responsible for coordinating rocket attacks from Lebanon. Naim was reportedly killed after an airstrike on Bazouriyeh in southern Lebanon.
What We Don’t Know
Israel has not confirmed or denied any role in the strike. “We’ve seen the strike,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at the department’s briefing on Monday. Miller declined to comment further, saying the U.S. still needs to have conversations with their partners in the region. “Of course we are worried about escalation, we are worried about anything that would cause the conflict to expand or widen in any way,” Miller added. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also told reporters the president’s team was “looking into” the situation.