Iran vows revenge on Israel after Damascus embassy attack

Iran vowed yesterday to take revenge on Israel for an air strike that killed two of its top generals and five other military advisers at the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus.

Conflict has rippled across the Middle East since the onset of the Gaza war; until now, Tehran has carefully avoided direct conflict with Israel while backing allies attacking Israeli and US targets.

Israel has not declared responsibility for the attack which destroyed a consular building adjacent to the main embassy building in the upscale Mezzeh district of Damascus on Monday night, killing seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

But a senior Israeli government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said those hit had “been behind many attacks on Israeli and American assets and had plans for additional attacks”.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed revenge, saying: “The Zionist regime will be punished by the hands of our brave men. We will make it regret this crime and others it has committed.”

Khamenei’s political adviser Ali Shamkhani, in a post on X, said the US “remains directly responsible whether it was aware of the intention to carry out this attack”.

At least one member of the Iran-backed Hezbollah was also killed in the strike, two security sources in Lebanon said.

Israel has stepped up a years-long campaign of air strikes against Iranian or Iranbacked targets in Syria since the onset of the Gaza war, but Monday’s apparent strike was one of the boldest yet.

Iran’s ambassador to Syria Hossein Akbari, who was not wounded in the strike, has said the flattened building housed his residence.

“Having failed to destroy the will of the resistance front, the Zionist regime (Israel) has put blind assassinations back on its agenda to save itself,” Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said, referring to Iran’s allies in the “Axis of Resistance”.

“It must know that it will never achieve its goals and this cowardly crime will not go unanswered.”

Iranian state media said Tehran believed the target was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, one of the brigadier generals killed.

Hezbollah’s al-Manar outlet said Zahedi was in the Quds Force from 2008 to 2016, then led the Guards’ operations from 2016 and 2019 before returning to the Quds Force to work on its Lebanon and Syria operations until this year.

The attack was one of the heaviest blows to the Guards since the assassination of Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani in a US drone strike on Baghdad in 2020.

Asked about the strike, an Israeli military spokesperson said: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media”.

The New York Times said four unnamed Israeli officials acknowledged Israel had carried out the attack.