Deadly strike on Iran consulate ‘crossed a line’: Analysts

A deadly strike by the Zionist entity against Iran’s diplomatic mission in Damascus could trigger a spillover of the Gaza war across the region, an escalation Tehran had sought to avoid, analysts said. Monday’s strike levelled the consular annex of the Iranian embassy and killed 13 people, including seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iranian state media reported. They included two senior commanders of the Guards’ Qud Force foreign operations arm, Brigadier Generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, Iranian officials said.

Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group called the attack “a significant escalation”. “By targeting an Iranian diplomatic facility, the Zionist entity has crossed a line,” he told AFP. After months of bombing Gaza, the Zionist now is now stepping up its operations against Iranian and pro-Iran commanders in Lebanon and Syria, a move observers fear could spiral into all-out war. Iran has denied prior knowledge of Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on the Zionist entity. But it is one of Hamas’ top supporters and backs a plethora of armed groups that have attacked the Zionist entity in solidarity with Hamas, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has exchanged near-daily fire with the Zionist entity for months.

Although Iran has said it wants to avoid full-scale war, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Tuesday that “The Zionist entity will be punished” for the Damascus strike, while President Ebrahim Raisi said the raid “will not go unanswered”.

‘Towards escalation’

Bassam Abu Abdallah, who heads the Damascus Centre for Strategic Research and is close to the Syrian government, said that before Monday, “there were rules of engagement, but now it’s an all-out war between the Zionist entity and the resistance axis”.

Iran and its supporters use the term resistance axis to refer to its alliance with armed groups around the region which share its resolutely anti-Zionist and anti-American stance. “It is now clear that the trend is towards escalation,” Abu Abdallah said, adding: “We could start to see increased attacks against US bases in Syria, Iraq or elsewhere.” In late January, pro-Iran groups said they were suspending attacks against US troops in Iraq and Syria to avert a regional escalation, after both Baghdad and Tehran said they opposed the groups’ campaign. On Tuesday, Hezbollah warned that the strike on the Iranian consulate “will not pass without the enemy receiving punishment and revenge”. —