Syria’s Axis of Resistance to Israel: Israel vs. Lebanon in the Recent War Between Israel and the Arab-Israeli Interaction
AMMAN, Jordan — Iran said Monday that Israel killed two of its generals and several others in an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus.
Iranian state media said at least seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite overseas wing, known as the Quds Force, were killed when Israeli F-35s struck the building with six rockets, almost entirely demolishing it. Syrian state media said the airstrike leveled the Iranian embassy annex.
Israel’s bombing of an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, which killed senior Iranian military and intelligence officials, is a major escalation of what has long been a simmering undeclared war between Israel and Iran.
The killing of General Zahedi, who was said to be in charge of Iran’s military relationship with Syria and Lebanon, is widely considered the most important assassination of an Iranian leader in years.
The attack was a gross violation of international convention, said the spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry. He said the Iranian government would take necessary action against the attack.
Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told his Syrian counterpart Faisal Mekdad in a phone call that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “had completely lost his mental balance due to repeated defeats of the regime in Gaza.”
Displaying its ability to infiltrate Iranian intelligence, Israel is trying to hit the operational part of Iran’s regional proxies, its so-called Axis of Resistance to Israel, aiming to disrupt and deter them, even as the war in Gaza continues.
Iran said at the start of the Gaza war that it had not known in advance of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. It does run a network of armed groups in the region that it backs, arms and to some extent supervises.
Hezbollah has been fighting Israel across the two countries’ borders since the beginning of the war and has diverted Israeli military resources from the fighting in Gaza.
Iran promises major retaliation, and the danger of a miscalculation is ever-present. Iran and Israel are both trying to get an advantage in Lebanon and Gaza, even as they don’t want a major shooting war.
Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House and he said that the strike could help Mr. Netanyahu rehabilitate his reputation as Mr. Security. It may not be enough with Israel bogged down in Gaza, Hamas and Iranundiminished she said.
The fighting between Israel and Iran is sometimes called the war between the wars, with Israel and Iran as the main adversaries.
The Iranian officials who were killed Monday had been deeply engaged for decades in arming and guiding proxy forces in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen as part of Iran’s clearly stated effort to destabilize and even destroy the Jewish state.
In the weeks following Hamas’s gruesome Oct. 7 incursion, Mr. Netanyahu’s political future looked bleak. The prime minister had long boasted that his more than 15 years in power had been Israel’s most secure; The legacy was shattered by Hamas. The man who described himself as “Mr. Security,” who said he hoped to be remembered as “the protector of Israel,” appeared responsible for the deadliest single day in Israel’s history. Even as military and intelligence leaders have since stepped up to take the blame, Mr. Netanyahu has pointedly refused to acknowledge his own culpability.
Since the war began in October, Israel has begun to target key Iranian officials responsible for relations with its proxies, not just the advanced weapons Tehran delivers, said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group.
But no matter how many experienced generals Israel eliminates, “no one is irreplaceable in the Iranian system,” he said. Iran knows this is a dicey game and there is a price tag attached.
Some worry that price may be paid by allies of Israel. Ralph Goff, a former senior C.I.A. official who served in the Middle East, called Israel’s strike “incredibly reckless,” adding that “the Israelis are writing checks that U.S. CentCom forces will have to cash,” referring to the U.S. military’s Central Command.
“It will only result in escalation by Iran and its proxies, which is very dangerous” to U.S. forces in the region who could be targeted in retaliatory strikes by Tehran’s proxies, Mr. Goff said.
The current war in the Middle East makes creation of a vision of the region nearly impossible, she said.
Yaakov Amidror, a former Israeli national security adviser, called the death of General Zahedi “an enormous blow to Iran’s immediate capabilities in the region.” He had helped oversee Iran’s attempt to build a “ring of fire” around Israel via its militant proxies while keeping Tehran’s involvement at arm’s length, Mr. Amidror said.
But how and when Iran chooses to retaliate will further raise the stakes. The response to the assassination of Quds Force Commander Qassim Suleimani four years ago is the most recent example. Then, Iran launched a missile attack on an American base in Iraq, but only after warning. There were no immediate U.S. casualties, though more than 100 military personnel suffered traumatic brain injuries, the Pentagon later said.
Even if someone critical is removed from the network, Iran will still be able to find another source of support, Ms. Maloney said.
Tensions between Iran and the United States have been on the rise after a January attack on a military base in Jordan killed three American soldiers.
It could make other choices — a major cyberattack on Israeli infrastructure or its military, a barrage of rockets from southern Lebanon, a similar assassination of an Israeli commander, an attack on an Israeli embassy abroad, or another sharp acceleration of its nuclear-enrichment program.
The last would be a kind of direct rebuke to Mr. Netanyahu, who has vowed to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Iran has always insisted that its program is peaceful even as it has enriched its own material to a degree close to weapons grade.
“Their interests haven’t changed in the aftermath. They’ll look for revenge, but that’s something else entirely,” he said, and it does not have to be limited to the immediate region.
One previous example he cited was the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires by Islamic Jihad, which killed 29 people and came in response to Israel’s assassination of the Hezbollah leader Abbas al-Musawi.
The moment Israel’s devastating war in the Gaza Strip ends, the unfinished conflict within Israel over its future will begin again. Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition partners know this. That may be, in part, why they have set the improbable aim of “total victory” as the war’s ultimate objective, and why they have so far refused any deal that would end the fighting in exchange for returning the roughly 100 hostages still in Hamas captivity. This war is Israel’s longest since it became an independent country.
According to a January poll, only 15% of Israelis would like him to remain in office. And, in another recent poll, by Israel’s Channel 13, most Israelis said they did not trust Mr. Netanyahu’s handling of the war. Support for his right-wing Likud party has likewise cratered.