An Israeli missile attack on Damascus, the capital of Syria, killed five members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard yesterday, including the deputy director of intelligence in Syria of its elite force, the Quds Force. His name, Sadegh Omidzadeh, was cited by Nour News, considered a medium close to the Islamic Republic’s intelligence apparatus, along with that of his lieutenant, who used the nom de guerre Hajj Gholam.
The Revolutionary Guards, however, provided five different names, which were mentioned by other Iranian agencies. Iranian state television said the building attacked was the residence of Iranian advisers in the Syrian capital. The Iranian presence in Syria became more noticeable as the war began in March 2011, and has been essential to the survival of the Bashar al-Assad regime.
On the Israeli side, and as usual, there were no comments regarding the attack and no claim of responsibility. For a long time, Israel has carried out a bombing campaign against Iran’s military and security presence in Syria, but in particular against Hezbollah, Tehran’s ally and also present in Syria. Attacks against traffic and weapons storage have been routine for years, given the impotence of Damascus to respond to the violation of its territory.
Since the October 7 attack by Hamas, however, Israeli incursions have been increasingly deadly and – in the first few days – included several Israeli air strikes on the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo for make the tracks useless. In December, an airstrike killed two members of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria, and on December 25 a third and much more important one, General Razi Mousavi, who was until then the head of the Quds Force in Syria.
These and other casualties in the powerful Iranian military structure would have caused the missile attack that killed Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayi on January 16 in Irbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, right in front of the US consulate. Tehran claimed that Dizayi “was actually the cover for the Israeli Mossad”.
Iran condemned yesterday’s attack as a “desperate attempt to spread instability in the region”, state media reported, announcing that “Iran (…) reserves its right to respond to organized terrorism” of the false Zionist regime at the appropriate time and place”, according to the spokesman for Foreign Affairs.
Syrian state media reported an Israeli “airstrike” on a building in the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus, saying Syrian air defenses had shot down several missiles. A Syrian security source told Reuters that the multi-story building was indeed used by Iranian advisers and was leveled by “precision-guided Israeli missiles.”
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards noted that several members of the Syrian armed forces were also killed. Rescue operations for people trapped under the debris continued throughout the day.
In the same pattern of selective Israeli attacks, just yesterday four members of Hizbullah – one of them, a local commander – were killed, apparently by a drone, when they were driving near Tire in southern Lebanon . At the same time, “Israeli warplanes attacked terrorist infrastructure, an observation site and a launch site belonging to the Hizbullah terrorist organization, in the area of ??Al Adisa, in southern Lebanon,” according to an Israeli spokesman .
