Top Iranian general killed in Israeli strike: What we know so far

RT

April 2, 2024

A top Iranian general was among those killed in an apparent targeted assassination by Israel on Syrian soil on Monday. The airstrike, which hit Tehran’s consulate in Damascus, raises the prospect of a major regional escalation.

1.          1. The airstrike

The diplomatic compound was hit by a missile, purportedly launched by an Israeli F-35 fighter jet. The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) confirmed that seven of its officers were killed, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

The list of IRGC victims also included Zahedi’s deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, two military leaders, and senior military advisers in Syria, the statement said. Two Syrian police officers, who were guarding the consular section of the embassy, were killed as well, according to Ambassador Hossein Akbari.

Israel has not claimed responsibility for the attack, in line with its usual policy of neither confirming nor denying operations on foreign soil.

2.          2. Vows of retaliation

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has vowed that the attack will not go unanswered. In a statement on Tuesday, he called it a “cowardly crime” and an act of terrorism, as well as “a clear violation of international regulations.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani has urged the UN and the international community to condemn the strike on a protected building. Iran reserves the right to “punish the aggressor” as it sees fit, he warned.

3.          3. High-profile target

General Zahedi was a senior commander in the Quds force, the IRGC unit responsible for clandestine operations. He was reportedly in charge of the division’s activities in Lebanon and Syria.

His death was arguably the most significant blow to Quds since its then-commander Qassem Soleimani was killed in a US targeted assassination in January 2020 in Baghdad.

The significance of the killing was highlighted by pro-Israeli accounts on social media, which reacted to the news by posting a group photo featuring the two military leaders alongside three other prominent officials. Two of them, former IRGC commander Ahmad Kazemi and Hezbollah co-founder Imad Mughniyeh, have been assassinated. The sole survivor is Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Lebanon-based militant political party.

4.          4. International reaction

Several countries swiftly expressed their condemnation, including Saudi Arabia, a nation that otherwise has frosty relations with Iran. Riyadh said it rejected targeting of diplomatic facilities “for any justification, and under any pretext.”

Moscow’s reaction cited the same reason for denouncing the strike on the consulate. It warned that Israel was risking a major regional escalation with its undeclared operations on foreign soil. Russia urged other nations to clearly state their attitude to the incident and its legality, or illegality.

Israel’s key ally, the US, did not immediately comment on the incident. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that Washington was “looking into it”.

However, a scoop by news outlet Axios claimed that Israel tipped off the US just minutes before the strike, but did not say it was about to hit a consulate. Washington told Tehran it was not involved in the bombing, the outlet said, citing a senior US official.

5.          5. Iranian options

After Soleimani was killed, multiple US military bases in Iraq were bombarded by Iranian ballistic missiles. US military personnel were reportedly given warning hours ahead. According to the Pentagon, nobody was killed, but 34 soldiers suffered from traumatic brain injuries.

A tit-for-tat spiral of retribution between Iran and Israel may lead to catastrophic damage to the entire region, Farkhad Ibragimov, a Russian expert on international affairs, has suggested.

”The sides had some non-public communications to prevent an escalation. Now that is out of the question, and, unfortunately, nobody in the world could stop them,” he said in an interview. He perceives the Israeli strike as a sign of weakness rather than a show of force.

6.          6. Gaza ramifications

Israel has been increasingly alienating other nations with the way it conducts its military operation in Gaza. The Jewish state claims to be seeking the obliteration of Hamas, a Palestinian militant force that it considers an Iranian proxy. Critics of Israel say the high death toll in Gaza and policies of the Israeli government indicate an intention to ethnically cleanse the enclave.

Washington continues to arm its ally, purportedly “to defend itself”, but it has shifted its rhetoric since last October – when a deadly Hamas incursion into southern Israel triggered the current war.

Some US officials believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu is deliberately escalating diplomatic tensions and manufacturing a crisis for domestic gain, Axios reported last week.

 

‘A Declaration of War’Against Iran

Brett Wilkins

Iranian and Syrian officials on Monday accused Israel of bombing Iran’s consulate in Damascus, an attack one expert called a “war-abetting escalation” that U.S. President Joe Biden “claimed he was preventing” in the Middle East.

Seven people including Iranian diplomats and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) senior commander Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi were killed in the airstrike, which according to the BBC occurred at approximately 5 p.m. local time and flattened the multistory building adjacent to the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital’s Mezzeh district.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian described the strike as “a violation of all international obligations and conventions.” Faisal Mekdad, his Syrian counterpart, condemned what he called a “heinous terrorist attack.”

Israeli officials declined to comment on the attack. Israel has increased airstrikes targeting IRGC and Hezbollah militants inside Syria since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks.

Israeli strikes against Hezbollah have also killed hundreds of militants and civilians in Lebanon.

Hamidreza Azizi, a visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, called the consulate attack a “significant escalation in tensions.”

“This attack is viewed by some in Iran as a declaration of war by Israel against Iran,” Azizi wrote on social media. “It represents a shift from previous engagements, directly hitting Iranian soil represented by its consulate in Syria — as opposed to targeting IRGC officers in Syrian sites.”

“In earlier stages, Israel would refrain from targeting IRGC officers — only proxies and arms shipments,” he continued. “Since the Gaza war, a shift was already there to target high-ranking Iranian commanders. Some sources claim the attack was a response to an assault on an Israeli ship last night at the port of Eilat, attributed to Iraqi militias. This suggests another new rule of engagement by Israel: direct retaliation against Iran for any attacks by its proxies.”

Azizi added that the strike “is also seen as a message to both Iran and [President Bashar] al-Assad’s regime in Syria: Israel’s capability and willingness to escalate its response to the presence of Iranian forces in Syria.”

Numerous experts including Azizi wondered whether Israel informed the United States ahead of the attack.

A White House spokesperson said that Biden is aware of reports attributing the strike to Israel and that his “team is looking into it.”

Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft said on social media that “this is the exact type of conduct that usually prompts the U.S. to label a country a pariah or rogue state.”

“The U.S. accuses such states of seeking to destroy the ‘rules-based order,'” Parsi noted. “But so far, Biden has acquiesced to Israel’s conduct in this area as well as all other aspects of Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.”

Parsi accused Israel of “seeking to either destroy these norms or create a new normal in which it — much like the U.S. — will be untouchable above these laws and norms.”

He also called the Damascus strike “the kind of war-abetting escalation Biden claimed he was preventing.”

The U.S. has also bombed Syria — as well as Yemen, Iraq, and Somalia — since Oct. 7.

Palestinian Policy Network fellow Tariq Kenney-Shawa said: “What the Biden administration means by ‘taking every measure to avoid regional escalation’ is that they’re making sure only Israel is allowed to escalate. Deploying aircraft carriers, airstrikes in Yemen/Syria/Iraq, all of that is to make sure Israel can provoke but no one can respond.”

While Parsi wondered if Israel attacked Iran’s consulate — its sovereign territory — to elicit a response to justify a larger war,  Antiwar.com editor Dave DeCamp went further, accusing Israel of “trying to provoke a war with Iran to get the U.S. directly involved.”

Iranian journalist Mona Hojat Ansari wrote for The Tehran Times that the far-right government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “believes that by plunging the region into a maelstrom of chaos and entangling the United States in another pointless war in West Asia that would drain American resources, it may find a chance to survive as an apartheid establishment.”

“The attack on Iran’s consulate should particularly raise a red flag for Washington,” she added, “as it demonstrates Israel’s readiness to ignite the entire region, even if it means that the U.S. and all its traditional allies in the region would suffer devastating consequences.”

 

‘This is unforgivable’: Israeli airstrike kills 7 World Central Kitchen workers

Jake Johnson

World Central Kitchen said Tuesday that a targeted Israeli airstrike killed seven members of its aid team in Gaza as they left a warehouse in the city of Deir al-Balah, where they had just unloaded more than 100 tons of food set to be distributed to starving Palestinians.

The Washington, D.C.-based aid organization said the seven killed included a dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada as well as Australian, Polish, and British nationals and one Palestinian staffer later identified as Saif Abu Taha.

“This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war,” Erin Gore, the group’s CEO, said in a statement. “This is unforgivable.”

WCK said its convoy of vehicles—including two armored cars branded with the group’s logo—was hit by an Israeli strike while traveling in what was supposed to be a deconflicted zone. The group said it coordinated the convoy’s movements with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), leading WCK to conclude that the attack was not an accident.

“I am heartbroken and appalled that we—World Central Kitchen and the world—lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF,” Gore said Tuesday. “The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished.”

Photographs and video footage from the scene and its aftermath show utter carnage. Rescue teams that arrived at the scene and removed the WCK staffers’ bodies from the wreckage displayed the passports of those killed, identifying Zomi Frankcom of Australia, Damian Sobol of Poland, and other victims of the Israeli strike.

The IDF pledged to carry out “an in-depth examination at the highest levels”—a promise that, given the Israeli military’s record, is likely to prove empty.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that the strike “unintentionally hit innocent people,” but Haaretz reported that the attack “was launched because of suspicion that a terrorist was traveling with the convoy”—an indication that the strike itself, targeting vehicles carrying aid workers, was intentional.

The Israeli military has repeatedly attacked aid workers with impunity in recent months, killing staffers of United Nations agencies, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent, Doctors Without Borders, and other organizations.

WCK is known for coordinating emergency food relief in disaster zones around the world. The group has collected and delivered hundreds of tons of food to Gaza in recent weeks as famine has spread across the enclave due to the Israeli government’s blockade.

Following the deadly attack on its staffers, WCK said it would pause its operations in the region immediately.

“We will be making decisions about the future of our work soon,” the group said in a statement.

Celebrity chef José Andrés, the group’s founder, wrote in a social media post late Monday that he is “heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family.”

“These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia,” he wrote. “They are not faceless…they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has been accused of abetting genocide in Gaza, confirmed that Australian citizen Zomi Frankcom was among those killed by the Israeli strike and demanded “full accountability.”

“This is a tragedy that should never have occurred,” Albanese told reporters, saying he had summoned the Israeli ambassador to Australia.

Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said the Biden White House is “heartbroken and deeply troubled by the strike.”

“Humanitarian aid workers must be protected as they deliver aid that is desperately needed, and we urge Israel to swiftly investigate what happened,” she added.

 

Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen Accuses Israel of “Targeted Attack” on 7 of its Aid Workers

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Israeli fighter-jets routinely bomb dense urban areas, sometimes with massive bombs, in ways that President Joe Biden characterized as “indiscriminate.” Indiscriminate bombing of civilians is a war crime. On Monday, an Israeli airstrike hit an aid convoy mounted by Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen, killing at least 7 persons — an American of Palestinian heritage along with Polish, Australian and British nationals. Yes, once again Israel has rubbed out an American.

The organization responded at X, saying, “This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER.”

It seems pretty clear that the WCK believes that the Israelis deliberately struck their food convoy. Such attacks on aid workers and attempts at food delivery are routine on the part of the Israeli Air Force, and have come to be known as “flour massacres.”

Chef Andrés himself lashed out at the Israeli government on X, saying,

“Today @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless…they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”

There’s that charge of indiscriminate killing again, alongside an accusation that the Israeli government is deliberately starving the people of Gaza (“using food as a weapon”).

Andrés, trained in Spain, came to the US at the age of 21 to become a celebrity chef and renowned restaurateur. He began the World Central Kitchen in 2010 to address the Haiti crisis of that here. Haiti is one of the more dangerous places on earth and Haitian gangs are notorious for brutality, but even they never killed WCK aid workers.

At its website, the World Central Kitchen implicitly explained why it thinks its volunteers were targeted.

The site says, “The WCK team was traveling in a deconflicted zone in two armored cars branded with the WCK logo and a soft skin vehicle.

Despite coordinating movements with the IDF, the convoy was hit as it was leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tons of humanitarian food aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route.”

So that’s it. The cars were clearly marked as WCK, and the organization had given its coordinates to the Israeli military (in retrospect perhaps a fatal mistake). Either Israeli fighter jet pilots are blind or they are deliberately hitting aid workers.

Marking oneself as a noncombatant in a war zone has long been problematic. I had friends who served in Vietnam who were convinced that medics wearing a red cross were actively targeted by the Viet Cong.

The CEO of World Central Kitchen, Erin Gore, lambasted the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: “This is not only an attack against WCK, this is an attack on humanitarian organizations showing up in the most dire of situations where food is being used as a weapon of war. This is unforgivable.”

Just in case Israel and the US did not get the message, Ms. Gore laid it out even more explicitly:

“I am heartbroken and appalled that we—World Central Kitchen and the world—lost beautiful lives today because of a targeted attack by the IDF. The love they had for feeding people, the determination they embodied to show that humanity rises above all, and the impact they made in countless lives will forever be remembered and cherished.”

She concludes that it was a targeted attack.