The Cradle, December 25, 2023 —
Israel’s latest attack on the Syrian capital killed a top IRGC commander who was ‘responsible for coordinating’ the military alliance between Tehran and Damascus.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) vowed to make Israel “pay the price” after confirming that Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, a top commander in the IRGC Quds Force, was killed during an Israeli airstrike on 25 December in the vicinity of Damascus.
In a statement, the IRGC said Mousavi was killed “in a criminal missile attack by the fake and child-killing Zionist regime,” adding that Tel Aviv will “undoubtedly pay the price for this crime.”
The Quds Force commander was killed during the latest round of Israeli airstrikes near the Syrian capital, which targeted the vicinity of the Sayyida Zeinab area in the countryside of Damascus.
According to Al-Mayadeen, Mousavi was “one of the most senior and prominent commanders of the Quds Force […] and one of the commanders entrusted with the Syrian file.”
Iranian media described him as being “responsible for coordinating” the military alliance between Syria and Iran, while an IRGC statement said he was in charge of providing “logistical support to the axis of resistance in Syria.
The statement added Mousavi was a “companion” of slain IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds Force, who was in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020.
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said that Mousavi’s killing was a sign of Israel’s “frustration, helplessness and incapacity.”
Mousavi had reportedly survived multiple assassination attempts over the past several years.
Earlier this month, Tehran reported that Israeli airstrikes killed two IRGC members in Syria who had served as military advisers there. Multiple Syrian soldiers were also injured during Israeli attacks this month.
According to a March 2022 report from the Jerusalem Post, the Israeli Air Force has carried out more than a thousand airstrikes on Syrian targets over the past five years.
Western analysts describe Israeli attacks on Syria as “war-between-war operations,” with these airstrikes being preparation for another imminent war.