Israeli airstrike kills senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards

BEIRUT:

An Israeli airstrike outside the Syrian capital Damascus on Monday killed a senior adviser to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, three security sources and Iran’s state media said.

The sources told Reuters that the adviser, known as Sayyed Razi Mousavi, was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.

“I will not comment on foreign reports, these or others in the Middle East,” IDF spokesman Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari said in response to a reporter’s question at an overnight news conference. “The Israeli military obviously has a job to protect Israel’s security interests.”

Iran’s state television interrupted its regular news broadcast to announce that Mousavi had been killed, describing him as one of the Guards’ oldest advisers in Syria.

It said he was “among those accompanying Qassem Soleimani,” the head of the elite Quds Force killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020.

Iran’s ambassador to Damascus, Hossein Akbari, told Iranian state television that Mousavi was posted to the embassy as a diplomat and was killed by Israeli missiles after returning home from work.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said Mousavi’s killing showed weakness on Israel’s part.

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“This act is a sign of the frustration and weakness of the Zionist regime in the region for which it will surely pay the price,” Raisi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

The Revolutionary Guards said Israel would suffer for the killing of Mousavi, who held the rank of brigadier general in the Guards.

“The usurping and savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime,” the Guards said in a statement read on state television.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told state media that: “Iran reserves the right to take the necessary measures to respond to this action at the appropriate time and place.”

For its part, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group condemned Mousavi’s killing as a “cowardly act”, saying he played a vital role in supporting the resistance in the region as well as the Palestinian people and their cause.

There was no immediate comment from Israel’s military.

Israel has for years carried out strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it backed President Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war that broke out in 2011.

Earlier this month, Iran said Israeli strikes had killed two members of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria who had served as military advisers there.

Iran has sent hundreds of Guardsmen as “advisers” to help train and organize thousands of Shiite militia fighters from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan to support the government in the Syrian conflict. Lebanese Hezbollah fighters have also worked closely with Iranian military commanders in Syria.