Jared Malsin and Benoit Faucon
The airstrike that killed top Iranian military officials in Syria on Monday threatened to put Israel into open conflict with Iran, illustrating how the countries’ long-simmering shadow war has entered a dangerous new phase.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Ebrahim Raisi vowed on Tuesday to respond to the attack, which Syria and Iran said hit an Iranian consulate. Israel didn’t confirm or deny responsibility for a strike that Israeli analysts said took the country’s covert military campaign against Iran and its allies to another level, because of the diplomatic target and the Iranian leaders who were killed.
After nearly six months of war in Gaza and violent conflict with the Iran-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Israel appears determined to roll back Iranian military influence in neighboring countries despite the risk that its aggressive new approach could trigger a broader regional escalation.
“It’s a very interesting threshold that was crossed,” said a senior Israeli military official of the Damascus strike. “It sends a clear message that we know exactly where you guys are. Which is good. It will make it harder for them to move around.”
Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior leader of the Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, was killed in Syria on Monday.
Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes against Iran and its network of militia allies in Syria and throughout the Middle East in recent years, a campaign that Israel rarely acknowledges but has long been an open secret. Now, Israel and Iran are closer to a direct clash than they have been in years, even as Israel’s war against Tehran-backed Hamas in Gaza drags on.
“We are in a multifront war, offensively and defensively,” said Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Tuesday. “We have evidence of this every day, including in recent days, and are acting everywhere and every day to prevent the strengthening of our enemies.”
The United Nations Security Council decided to hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday to discuss the Damascus attack, as governments around the world condemned an attack on a diplomatic facility. Diplomatic installations have protected status under international law, including the Vienna Convention of 1961 that says consular premises are inviolable.
An Israeli military spokesman said that, according to Israeli intelligence, the building hit in Damascus wasn’t a diplomatic facility, but a building that the Quds Force uses and is disguised as a civilian site. Television footage and images of the aftermath of the attack showed heavy damage to a building labeled as the consular section of the Iranian Embassy.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said the strike hit a “known diplomatic location” and killed a number of Iran’s military advisers that it said had diplomatic immunity, while they were preparing to break the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
The strike was one of the highest-profile killings in years of leaders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeting Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior leader of the Guard’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, who had been sanctioned by the U.S. for his alleged role in supporting terrorism, including smuggling weapons to Hezbollah. Iran says it supports groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas that it views as resisting Israel and its occupation over Palestinians. The U.S. has designated Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist organizations.
The strike also killed several senior members of the IRGC’s leadership responsible for covert Iranian militant activity in Syria and Lebanon. The death toll rose to 13 on Tuesday, according to Iranian state TV that cited Iran’s ambassador to Syria.
Through the Revolutionary Guard and its elite Quds Force, Tehran has built up an array of militias across the region that can strike more powerful adversaries such as the U.S. and Israel without engaging in a direct confrontation with either one.
Emergency and security personnel worked at the site of the airstrike in Syria’s capital Damascus.
These militias have taken an increasingly central role in the wider crisis resulting from the Gaza war, with militant groups in Iraq and Syria claiming attacks on Israel. Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another Iran-aligned group, have disrupted global trade patterns by targeting ships in the Red Sea in response to the war in Gaza.
In a separate sign of the risk of a regional escalation, U.S. forces shot down a drone that approached the American military base at al-Tanf in eastern Syria, according to a defense official. The attack, which caused no injuries or damage, was the first since the U.S. launched strikes on Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq in February.
Monday’s strike in Damascus could potentially rewrite the rules of engagement in Iran and Israel’s shadow war. While Iran in the past has targeted Israeli diplomatic personnel abroad, it has considered its own consulates and embassies to be safe.
Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a top Iranian commander who was killed in a suspected Israeli operation last year, held the diplomatic rank of second counselor at the consulate in Damascus, according to the Iranian ambassador to Syria, but was killed after he had left the consular building.
The aftermath of the attack showed heavy damage to a building labeled as the consular section of the Iranian Embassy.
Where the conflict goes from here depends on how and whether Iran decides to respond. Raisi said the attack “will not go unanswered,” while Khamenei said Israel would “regret this crime.”
Iran is planning to respond but won’t escalate in ways that could provoke a direct Israeli strike on its domestic facilities, especially its nuclear program, said an Iranian official and an IRGC adviser. Iran won’t publicly take credit for any violent retaliation, the adviser said.
Security analysts said Iran is wary of going to full-scale war with Israel, which could draw in the U.S.
“They would feel compelled to respond to yesterday’s strike on their consulate but that would be in a limited manner,” said Hamdi Malik, an associate fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on Iran’s militia network in the region.
An anti-Israel banner with pictures of Israeli leaders in Tehran.
In a letter to the Security Council late Monday, Iran said it would take a “decisive response” to the Israeli attack but in line with international laws, according to a copy of the letter seen by The Wall Street Journal.
Helima Croft, a geopolitical analyst at Canadian broker RBC, said she wouldn’t rule out the IRGC pushing for a forceful response because Israel’s attack on a diplomatic facility “could be considered an attack on Iranian soil.”
The Damascus strike also demonstrated new risks for the Iranian diplomatic facilities. The IRGC has long used Iranian embassies and consulates to plan attacks on foreign targets, according to Western officials and analysts. In 2018, German police arrested a senior Iranian diplomat working at the Iranian Embassy in Austria. He was later sentenced to prison in a Belgian court for planning a bomb attack against Iranian dissidents in Paris, and released in a prisoner exchange last year.
The Revolutionary Guard’s adviser said Iran understood Monday’s attack as a message it should pull its personnel out of diplomatic facilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment