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Israel keeps escalating the regional war
Six people killed in Israeli strike on Damascus, war monitor says
The Britain-based monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack hit “the building of an annex to the Iranian embassy … in Damascus, killing six people”.
A correspondent from the AFP news agency, who was at the site, said the attack had levelled the building next to the embassy in an upscale neighbourhood of Damascus.
IRGC commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi killed in Damascus attack: Reports
A Lebanese security source tells the Reuters news agency that a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Mohammad Reza Zahedi, was killed in an Israeli strike on Damascus.
As we reported earlier, the Iranian consulate building in the Syrian capital was targeted and reduced to rubble, according to Reuters journalists who were at the scene. The Syrian state news agency, SANA, also confirmed that the building has been destroyed.
When asked to comment on the reported attack, an Israeli military spokesperson told Reuters: “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media.”
‘Iran will have no option but to retaliate’
Abbas Aslani, senior research fellow at the Centre for Middle East Strategic Studies, says the apparent Israeli attack in Damascus is a “serious escalation” that is different from the indirect tit-for-tat that has taken place between Israel and Iran for years.
Speaking from Tehran, Aslani said the personalities targeted were important, “including a commander considered as a lynchpin for Iran’s presidency in Syria and Lebanon”. He also said the location is crucial because an Iranian consulate is considered to be sovereign Iranian territory.
“The Israelis want to expand the scope of the war in order to bring the US into the story to attract more attention from the Americans. They have not been able to achieve their objectives in the field, and that’s why they want to divert attention,” he told Al Jazeera.
“We will need some more time to calculate Iran’s response. It could come from groups aligned with Iran indirectly, or it can come from Iran directly against Israeli and American interests in the region, or it could be a combination.”
“I think Iran will have no option but to retaliate because no retaliation will welcome further Israeli attacks,” Aslani said.
Iranian FM: Netanyahu has ‘lost his mental balance’ after Damascus attack
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that Israel’s actions in attacking the Iranian consulate in Damascus were a result of the “successive failures of the Israeli regime in Gaza and the failure to achieve the ambitious goals of the Zionists”.
He called for a “serious response” from the international community.
Meanwhile, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said that Iran would decide what type of “response and punishment” was necessary against Israel.
Israel trying to ‘drag’ Iran into a regional war, analyst says
Ali Vaez, director of the International Crisis Group’s Iran Project, says Israel’s alleged attack on Iran’s consulate in Syria is “akin to targeting another country on its own soil”.
“Overall this seems to still be a low-simmer regional war. It’s not yet an all-out regional conflict, but it does appear that Israel is trying to do everything in its power to expand the conflict,” Vaez told Al Jazeera.
“[This] puts Israel in a win-win situation because Israel knows Iran doesn’t want to get dragged into a regional war, so if it escalates its attacks against Iranian assets and personnel in Syria, it probably will be cost free, and if Iran does respond and retaliate, then it becomes a justified pretext for expanding the war.”
