From the site of the building destroyed in an Israeli raid on Damascus (French)
Tehran
- January 2024 was not the first of the months whose days were very difficult for Iranians, as his name was associated with bloody events throughout history, and Iranians began to fear him similar to their fear of the unlucky number 13. So how could the month that Persia began with the death of about 100 and hundreds of its citizens were injured in a double bombing that targeted a party in the city of Kerman.
After the urgent tension in Tehran’s relations with both Erbil and Islamabad following the Revolutionary Guard’s missile bombing on what it called “terrorist strongholds in Pakistan and the Mossad headquarters in northern Iraq,” the Iranians received, yesterday morning, Saturday, shocking news of the killing of 5 senior military advisors, in an Israeli raid on The Mezzeh neighborhood in the Syrian capital, including Youssef Amid Zadeh, head of the intelligence unit in the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard, and his deputy, Hajj Gholam.
This comes less than a month after the assassination of General Radhi Mousavi, responsible for the support unit of what is known as the “Axis of Resistance” in Syria, as a result of an Israeli missile strike on his house in the Sayyida Zeinab area of the Syrian capital, and about a month after the killing of two other advisors in A similar raid in the Damascus suburb.
Security exposure
The assassination yesterday brought back the old and new question about the reason for the security exposure of the Iranian presence on Syrian territory, as Israel had previously launched hundreds of air strikes on Iranian targets on Syrian territory over the past decade, in addition to the assassinations that targeted Iranian scientists and “sabotage” operations targeting its nuclear facilities. And the military inside Iran.
Tasnim News Agency's military affairs correspondent, Muhammad Mehdi Yazdi, revealed that at least 20 Iranian military advisors were killed in Israeli raids on Syria during the last decade.
In a tweet on the On March 21, 2023).
Other Iranian tweeters accused some foreign countries, which have good relations with the Syrian regime, of leaking security data to Israel about Iranian targets in Syria.
Security affairs researcher Muhammad Qadri believes that most of the assassinations that Tel Aviv is carrying out against Iranians represent “a reaction to strikes it receives from Tehran, especially since the latter has dismantled dozens of Israeli spy cells during the past months.”
🔴Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: We strongly condemn the Israeli aggression on a residential area in #Damascus, which led to the martyrdom of 4 Iranian military advisors.
Iranian Foreign Ministry: We consider the aggression a new Israeli attempt to spread chaos in the region and destabilize its security.
🔻Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The blood of our martyrs will not go away... pic.twitter.com/V7zssezm7Z
- Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimarabic) January 20, 2024
Total war
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Qadri says, “The war is a debate,” and that his country is “fighting a comprehensive war at various levels, especially security and cyber, against the Zionist entity,” describing the recent Israeli escalation against his country’s forces in Syria as “the best evidence of the effectiveness of what those forces are doing.” On the borders of the occupied Palestinian territories.
Regarding whether Iranian goals have become exposed to Israel in Syria, Qadri believes that “Tehran still has the upper hand in the security war with Israel, as it previously recruited an agent at the level of a minister in the Israeli government, and obtained very valuable information through him.”
In 2018, the Israeli Internal Security Agency "Shin Bet" admitted that Iranian intelligence had succeeded in recruiting former Energy Minister Gonen Segev since 2012, and that he had visited Tehran twice and met intelligence officers, and had also met them in various places abroad, in hotels and apartments used according to the secret estimates of Iranian intelligence.
Qadri added, “Assassinations and counter-assassinations between Israel and Iran continue in light of the latter’s success in perpetuating the confrontation with it outside its territories,” adding that “unlike Tehran, which does not impose a media blackout on such events, the Zionist entity conceals most of the strikes it receives, directly or indirectly.” "Indirectly from the Islamic Republic."
Assassination policy
The security affairs researcher concluded that “Syria turned into a theater for foreign security services after the events of 2011,” adding that some of the “friendly countries that have relations with Tehran and Damascus are in close cooperation with the Israeli entity, which opens the door wide to the possibility of those countries leaking data about Iranian targets in Syria to the Israeli enemy.
A group of Iranians believe that Israel began adopting a policy of assassinations against the leaders of the “Axis of Resistance” after it absorbed the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation, and that it found in Syria a suitable space to take revenge on the “Quds Force,” the external arm of the Revolutionary Guards, which opens the way for the Iranian side and its allies to respond to the attack. Israeli interests throughout the region.
Conservative theorist Ali Akbar Rafipour considers the raid on the Mezzeh neighborhood in the Syrian capital evidence of “the precision of the Iranian attack on Erbil, and its causing great pain to the Zionists,” adding that “after Saturday’s assassinations, the ball has become in the Iranian court, and the axis of resistance must strike a more painful and precise blow. "This time for Israel."
In a tweet on the
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Commander Salami during the funeral ceremony of his predecessor Mousavi, who was killed in an Israeli raid on Damascus (Anatolia)
Blow by blow
Mansour Haqiqatpour, former leader of the Revolutionary Guards and former assistant to General Qassem Soleimani, believes that the Israeli escalation in the assassination of Iranian advisors in Syria, and leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance on Lebanese territory, comes in the context of the policy of the Israeli right-wing government to open a new front to save it from the Gaza trap.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, Haqiqat Bur believes that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has failed to lure Iran into the Gaza battle, to bring it into confrontation with the United States,” explaining that “Netanyahu is dancing these days slaughtered on the Lebanese and Syrian fronts, in order to obtain a pretext to open a new front.” New to Lebanon, it may require Tehran to direct direct strikes against the Zionist entity to support Hezbollah.”
He continued, "The Iranian bombing of the Mossad headquarters in Erbil, northern Iraq, last week was a painful response to the Israeli entity's assassination of the leader of the Revolutionary Guard, Mousavi, last month in Syria, and that Tehran will respond with a more painful strike to the Israeli raid on the Syrian Mezzeh neighborhood."
The former Revolutionary Guard leader added that his country is the one that “will determine the appropriate time and place to respond to the Israeli adventures, and will not set its watch according to Israeli time,” stressing that Iran is not afraid to adopt a policy of “blow for blow” against Israel, and that “the confrontation will continue until final revenge.” from the Israeli occupation.
Between the “continuing security war at its most intense between Iran and Israel,” according to researcher Muhammad Qadri, and the “blow-by-blow strategy,” which Haqiqatpour believes will continue until Tehran’s final revenge on Tel Aviv, a third segment of Iranian circles warns of the growth of the sprouts of war, and their transformation into... To a dragon that might devour the entire region.
From the point of view of political activist Ahmed Zeidabadi, the Mezzeh assassinations show that “the war is on its way to penetrating the fabric of the Middle East,” adding in a comment published on his channel on the Telegram platform that “a comprehensive road map must be developed to resolve regional conflicts, and otherwise the war will... "It will eliminate all the potential of the West Asia region."
Source: Al Jazeera