Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has called upon the international community to take action following an Israeli assault on an Iranian consulate in Damascus, resulting in the death of a senior Guards commander and others.
During a telephone discussion with Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad, Amir-Abdollahian attributed the repercussions of the attack to the “Zionist regime,” emphasizing the necessity for a robust response from the global community, according to an official statement from Iran’s foreign ministry.
State TV disclosed that Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior figure within the Quds Force, the foreign operations wing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in the assault on the Islamic Republic of Iran’s consulate building in Damascus. Zahedi, aged 63, had been serving within the Guards for over four decades, holding various high-ranking positions.
Amir-Abdollahian condemned the attack as a violation of international obligations and conventions, while also suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions stemmed from recent Israeli setbacks in Gaza.
In a separate statement, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani vehemently denounced the attack, asserting Iran’s right to retaliate and indicating that the nature of the response and punishment for the aggressor would be determined later.
Earlier, Iran’s ambassador in Damascus, Hossein Akbari, stated that Israeli F-35 fighter jets, using six missiles, targeted the consulate building. He pledged a “decisive response” to the attack, which claimed the lives of “at least five people, including three military personnel.”
In a nighttime rally held in central Tehran’s Palestine Square on Monday, hundreds of demonstrators, brandishing flags of Iran and Palestine, demanded “revenge” and chanted slogans condemning the United States and Israel. The demonstrators also set Israeli and American flags ablaze, according to reports from AFP journalists present at the scene.
Notably, Iran has hailed Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which triggered the ongoing conflict, as a “success” but has denied direct involvement. Since then, Iran-backed groups in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen have conducted a series of attacks on Israeli and Western targets.
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