According to the semi-official Iranian Tasnim news agency, Brig. Gen. Razi Mousavi was killed in a strike in the Damascus suburb of Sayeda Zeinab.
Iran’s president Ebrahim Raisi vowed that Israel “will certainly pay for this crime.”
“Without a doubt, this action is another sign of frustration, helplessness, and incapacity of the usurping Zionist regime in the region,” Raisi said in a statement.
The Israel Defense Forces’ top spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, declined to comment on the reports during a press conference on Monday evening.
While Israel’s military does not, as a rule, comment on specific strikes in Syria, it has admitted to conducting hundreds of sorties against Iran-backed terror groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country, over the last decade.
Mousavi was responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Iran and Syria, and was believed by Israel to be heavily involved in Tehran’s efforts to supply weapons to terror proxies in the area, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Pro-government media outlets in Syria did not immediately report the strike, unlike other incidents in the past when Damascus has publicly blamed Israel for attacks.
Israel kills senior Iranian general in Syria strike
Israeli warplanes struck the Syrian capital of Damascus on Monday, killing a senior Iranian commander. Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that the general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, was in Syria to support the anti-Israel “resistance front.”
News of the strike was first reported by Iran’s Tasnim news agency, and confirmed shortly afterwards by the IRGC. “A few hours ago, during the criminal missile attack of the child-killing Zionist regime on Damascus, Brigadier-General Seyed Razi Mousavi, one of the IRGC's senior military advisers, was martyred,” the IRGC’s statement said.
At the time of his death, Mousavi was “responsible for supporting the resistance front in Syria,” the IRGC said, referring to the broad coalition of anti-Israel groups backed by Iran, which include Hezbollah in Lebanon and various Shia militias in Iraq and Syria.
“The usurping and barbaric Zionist regime will pay for this crime,” the statement concluded.
Mousavi was a close associate of Qasem Soleimani, who commanded the IRGC’s Quds Force from the late 1990s until his assassination by the US in 2020. The Quds Force primarily operates outside Iran, supporting and training Tehran’s allies, including those in the “resistance front.”
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