Iran blames Israel for strike that killed four senior military officials in Syria as Mid East conflict spirals

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has blamed Israel for a strike in Syria that killed four senior members of the group. 

“The Revolutionary Guards’ Syria intel chief, his deputy and two other Guards members were martyred in the attack on Syria by Israel,” Iran’s Mehr news agency announced, citing an unnamed source. 

Nour News, another Iranian news agency that allegedly has close ties to the country’s intelligence networks, identified Gen. Sadegh Omidzadeh, intelligence deputy of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria, and his deputy among the dead. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that another Iranian and a Syrian — unidentified at this time — also died in the strike. 

The strike destroyed a building in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh that the IRGC officials had allegedly used as a base of operations. The Syrian army claimed the Israeli Air Force fired the missiles while flying over the disputed Golan Heights region. 

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The Israeli military has not issued any comment on the strike, though Israeli officials have rarely spoken about alleged strikes. 

Iran has blamed Israel for several strikes in Syria over the past two months, including a strike on Christmas Day that killed high-ranking Iranian Gen. Seyed Razi Mousavi, and another just a few days later that killed members of the Iran-backed Iraqi militant group Islamic Resistance and Hezbollah.

Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria, Saturday, January 20, 2024.  (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

Iran retaliated this week by launching a strike on an alleged Israeli “spy headquarters” near the U.S. Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, killing four civilians and injuring six more. 

Israel allegedly launched these strikes in retaliation for attacks by Iran-backed groups in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq since the start of the war in Gaza. The strikes in Syria aim to cut off a significant weapons supply line for the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, who have launched a series of strikes along the Israeli border, The Times of Israel reported. 

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Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Thursday told his American counterpart Defense Sec. Gen. Lloyd Austin that Israel would soon decide on Lebanon and Hezbollah, stressing that Israel would prefer a diplomatic resolution but was “prepared to do this through military force.” 

Gallant said on Friday, during a tour along the Lebanon border, that Israel “will not accept this reality for an extended period.”

Syrian and Iranian state media outlets say an Israeli strike on Damascus killed four Iranian advisers.  (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)

“There will come a moment when if we do not reach a diplomatic agreement in which Hezbollah respects the right of the residents to live here in security, we will have to ensure that security by force,” Gallant declared. 

The U.S. and Israel remain divided on a resolution to the conflict, even after President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finally spoke following a month-long gap in direct communication. 

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Biden has increased his calls for a two-state solution and Palestinian sovereignty, but Netanyahu this week made clear that he will never allow such developments as long as he remains in power. 

Netanyahu reiterated his belief that an independent Palestine would provide a base of operation for terrorist strikes, stressing that Israel “must have security control over the entire territory west of the Jordan River,” adding: “That collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can we do?”

Revolutionary Guard members carry the flag-draped coffin of a victim of Wednesday’s bomb explosion, during the victim’s funeral ceremony in the city of Kerman, about 510 miles (820 km) southeast of the capital Tehran, Iran, Friday, January 5, 2024. Iran on Friday mourned those slain in an Islamic State group-claimed suicide bombing targeting a commemoration for a general slain in a U.S. drone strike in 2020. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

“This truth I tell to our American friends, and I put the brakes on the attempt to coerce us to a reality that would endanger the state of Israel,” Netanyahu said. 

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Just under 25,000 people have died in Gaza, according to numbers reported by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry and repeated by agencies such as the BBC and Al-Jazeera. The IDF this week claimed that its forces have killed 9,000 Hamas militants since the beginning of operations in Gaza in October. The Gaza Health Ministry does not distinguish between combatant and civilian deaths.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.