The airstrike in Damascus, Syria, which flattened an Iranian consulate building, killed a top Quds Force commander named Mohammed Reza Zahedi as well as other military officers, according to The Jerusalem Post.
Zahedi’s death marked a victory for Israel because he is the highest-ranking Iranian to die since the Israel-Hamas war began last October, the story said, but Iran has now vowed revenge against Israel and the U.S. because the airstrike hit embassy property in Damascus.
The airstrike on the Iranian consulate is a “breach of all international conventions,” Iran’s foreign minister told state media.
Quds Force, a branch of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, is the foreign espionage arm that aids proxy groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
Bob Maginnis, a military analyst at the Family Research Council, says Israel took out Zahedi because he is overseeing Iran’s proxy war against Israel.
Most of the public in the U.S., Maginnis says, is unaware of Israel’s ongoing military attacks against its most dangerous Middle East enemy, Iran.
“Outside of Aleppo and Damascus,” he tells AFN, “you don't hear about those strikes but they do take place.”
Israel’s air force, in fact, is continually bombing Syria and its Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters going back at least a decade. Those air attacks increased dramatically after last year’s Oct. 7 Hamas attack, such as the IDF bombing airport runways in Aleppo and Damascus to temporarily halt the resupply of weapons and envoys of Iranian military commanders.
Last December, a Christmas Day airstrike in Syria killed Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a brigadier general in the Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to a Reuters story.
Gary Bauer, of American Values, says it is obvious Israel has no plans to back down from attacking its enemies that want to wipe the State of Israel off the map.
“The Israeli government operates under a very important principle, and they will not be swayed away from it,” he says, “which is you can run but you can't hide.”
Iran passes diplomatic warning to U.S.
Suspecting the U.S. was involved in the April 1 airstrike, Tehran summoned a Swedish diplomat to pass along a message, which is the United States “must be held accountable” for aiding the IDF in the attack.
According to an Axios story, the IDF informed the Biden administration of the attack when military jets were on the way. The U.S. was unaware the target was part of Iran’s embassy compound, according to an unnamed U.S. official.
Bauer says the war is heading toward a breaking point.
“I'm inclined to think that there is a huge confrontation coming, regardless of what happens in Syria or any place else,” he says. “The mullahs of Iran are committed to destroying Israel and every day they get closer to having a nuclear weapon.”
