According to revelations from the channel Bloomberg, the attack attributed to Israel against the Iranian consulate in Syria would have decimated the entire command hierarchy responsible for the activities of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria and Lebanon. According to the report, “these senior officers were essential to Hezbollah’s activities in the region.” Reports indicate that General Mohammad Reza Zahedi and his deputy Mohammad Hadi Rahimi, along with other slain officers, were convinced that the consulate building, located next to the embassy, was “the safest” in Damascus and that ‘Israel would not dare attack him. Shortly before the strike, senior leaders of Syria’s Revolutionary Guards met on the second floor of the consulate and decided to stay there.
This attack pushed Iran, for the first time, to retaliate directly against Israel. Immediately afterwards, Tehran began to suspect the involvement of Syrian groups in several assassinations of members of the Revolutionary Guards in the country in recent years. According to a Syrian defector opposed to the Assad regime, who says he spoke to an Iranian official, Iran’s suspicions are being raised over the deaths of 18 commanders assassinated in a short period of time in attacks attributed to Israel.
A joint Iranian-Syrian investigation was first launched after the assassination of Raza Musawi in Syria in December 2023, to try to identify a possible security breach. But Iran then decided to carry out an independent investigation with Hezbollah, fearing interference from Syrian intelligence services. This investigation concluded that the flaws that enabled Musawi’s assassination in 2023 already benefited from high-level political and security cover, and that it was unlikely that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad would not have had it. awareness.
The defector added that Tehran’s suspicions were reinforced by the fact that the Hezbollah members murdered in the country were linked to the Syrian security services, and that their elimination was only possible thanks to espionage using advanced technologies.