Omar Sanadiki/AP
AMMAN, Jordan — Iran said Monday that Israel killed two generals and several others in an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital Damascus.
Iranian state media reported that at least seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' overseas elite unit, known as the Quds Force, were killed when an Israeli F-35 fired six rockets, almost completely destroying the building. Syrian state media said the airstrike collapsed the Iranian embassy annex.
Israel has not yet commented on the strike, but Israeli media reported that Iran had placed several embassies around the world on high alert after publicly criticizing Israel and vowing revenge.
Iranian media said Monday that the top military adviser killed in the airstrike was Brig. General Mohammad Reza Zahedi. His deputy, who was also an IRGC general, and five others were killed in the blast.
Zahedi would become Iran's top commander, who has reportedly been assassinated since the start of the Gaza war. He was Iran's main intermediary with Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based militant group fighting Israel across the Lebanon-Israel border and backed by Tehran.
Zahedi was in his 60s and was the commander of Iran's elite forces during the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted most of the 1980s. Iran said he later served as commander of IRGC ground forces and air force commander.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Khanani said the attack was a “grave violation of international agreements” protecting diplomatic missions. He pledged that Iran would take “necessary action” against the attack.
Iranian state news agency IRNA reported that Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdolayan said in a phone call with Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekhdad that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “completely lost his mental balance due to the repeated defeats of the Gaza regime.”
Israel has been waging a military offensive in the Gaza Strip since the October attack on Israel led by Hamas, a Palestinian militant group partly backed by Iran. Israel said 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attack.
Israel responded to the attack on the Gaza Strip by invading it, killing more than 32,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
Since the start of the Gaza war, Israel has expanded airstrikes against Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria.
This is one situation where many countries have been concerned that the war in Gaza could escalate into a larger conflict.
Iran says it did not know about the start of the Gaza war until Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. It operates a network of armed groups in the region that it supports, arms and, to some extent, supervises.
Although Iran is a Shia Muslim and Hamas is a Sunni group, the two have established ties and are believed to have coordinated some degree of Iranian proxy attacks on Israeli targets.
Iran's most powerful affiliated militia is Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has been fighting Israel across the border since the start of the war in Gaza in a bid to drain Israel of military resources.
So far, both Iran and Hezbollah have seemed reluctant to start an all-out war with Israel across their borders. But an intensification of Hezbollah attacks could be one means of retaliation.
Iran also supports a number of Iraqi militia groups that have been attacking U.S. forces in the region since the war in Gaza began, and in January killed three U.S. soldiers in an attack on a small base in Jordan close to the Syrian border.
Jane Arraf reported from Amman, Jordan. James Hider reported from Washington, D.C.