Posters depicting victims of an air strike on the consular annex of the Iranian embassy’s headquarters in Damascus are displayed during a memorial service for them at the premises in the Syrian capital on April 03, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

“We are in a multi-front war, offensively and defensively,” Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday, a day after Israeli warplanes attacked an annex of Iran’s Embassy in Damascus, killing at least 13, including a senior Iranian General. A few days earlier, Israel had attacked a weapons depot in northern Syria, killing at least 38 Syrian soldiers and half a dozen Hezbollah fighters. “We are acting everywhere and every day to prevent the strengthening of our enemies,” declared Mr. Gallant.

Since October 7, when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has Iran’s backing, carried out a cross-border attack in Israel, killing at at least 1,200 people, Israel has carried out dozens of air strikes in Syria and Lebanon, besides its full-throttled invasion of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, hitting Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah targets.

Octopus doctrine

Israel sees Iran as its main enemy — the meeting point of all anti-Israel non-state actors in West Asia, be it Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis or the Islamic Jihad. Its post-October 7 military response has two sides. One, continue the war in Gaza until Hamas’s military capabilities are destroyed (and possibly reoccupy the enclave) and two, step up the shadow war with Iran by openly targeting Iranian military figures and assets. As former Prime Minister Naftali Bennet once put it, Israel sees Iran as the head of the octopus, while the militias are its tentacles. Israel is now attacking both the head and the tentacles simultaneously.

Also Read | Iran vows response after strike it blames on Israel demolishes consulate in Syria

Nearly six months of fighting in Gaza has isolated Israel internationally. The high civilian toll in Gaza — over 32,000 Palestinians have been killed, a vast majority of them women and children — has triggered an international outcry. Hamas still holds over 130 hostages, who were captured on October 7. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution last month, demanding an immediate ceasefire. The Biden administration continues to back Israel militarily, but there is a growing uneasiness in the diplomatic relationship between the two countries. As the Gaza war grinds on, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under growing pressure at home to resign and call for an early vote, seems eager to escalate the regional confrontation with Iran. The attack on the embassy annex, which has been labelled as the consular section, was clearly a major escalation in the Israel-Iran shadow war.

Diplomatic facilities have protected status. The 1961 Vienna Convention states that embassy and consular premises should be protected even in times of war. Israel says the annex was a consular section only in the name and it was actually used by the Quds Force. Yet, an attack on a consular building was seen in Iran by many as an act of war.

The message Israel is sending to Iran is clear. Israel has exact intelligence on the movement of senior Iranian military figures. And they are not safe anywhere in Syria (and Lebanon) — even in embassy buildings. In other words, Israel seems determined to fight Iran’s influence in its neighbourhood even at the risk of an open conflict.

Muted response

In the past, Iran’s response to these Israeli attacks has been muted, for two possible reasons. One, Iran doesn’t want to give Israel what it wants — an open regional war. It would rather wait and see how Israel manages the mess in Gaza, while pro-Iran militias would keep needling Israel on the borders. Two, Iran’s military doctrine is rooted in avoiding direct confrontation with bigger powers. It always operates through proxies, in asymmetric styles. It knows that an open war with Israel would be disastrous for the whole region and it could draw the U.S. also into the war. So there is a strong argument in favour of strategic restraint.

But on the other side, every time Israel carries out a strike against Iran, it drills holes into the Islamic Republic’s deterrence. Iran’s inability or refusal to respond militarily to Israel’s provocations empowers Israel further. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, who was killed in the Damascus consulate attack, was a top Quds Force commander of the IRGC’s Syria operations. If Iran cannot respond to an attack on its consulate that killed a top General, it may not be the last such attack Iran faces in Syria or Lebanon. This leaves the Mullahs of Tehran in a dilemma. They have to respond to Israel’s attacks to bolster Iran’s weak deterrence. But they have to do so without triggering an open war with Israel.

Emergency and security personnel extinguish a fire at the site of strikes which hit a building annexed to the Iranian embassy in Syria’s capital Damascus, on April 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israeli air strikes destroyed the Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Syria on April 1, killing and wounding everyone inside, Damascus said as Iranian state TV reported a Revolutionary Guards commander among the dead.

Britain-based war monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight people, including several Guards members, were killed when “Israeli missiles… destroyed the building of an annex to the Iranian embassy”.

Iran’s ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari, giving a lower death toll, told Iranian state TV that “at least five people were killed in the attack which was carried out by F35 fighter jets”.

Israel did not immediately comment on the deadly attack in Damascus which comes at a time of soaring tensions over its Gaza war against Palestinian militants Hamas, and intensifying violence between Israel and Iran’s allies.

AFP reporters saw the annex building had caved in, and emergency services were rushing to search for victims under the rubble as sirens wailed in the upscale Damascus district of Mazzeh.

Security sources shielded the site where earth-moving equipment was brought in to clear the debris and remove charred vehicles from the road outside, watched by a crowd of onlookers.

Syria’s Defence Ministry said “the attack destroyed the entire building, killing and injuring everyone inside, and work is underway to recover the bodies and rescue the wounded from under the rubble”.

Iranian state TV said among those killed was a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Zahedi.

The Observatory said it had “confirmed the killing of a high-ranking leader who served as the leader of the Quds Force for Syria and Lebanon, two Iranian advisors, and five members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard”.

The Damascus strikes were the fifth in eight days to hit Syria, whose President Bashar al-Assad is supported by Iran, Israel’s long-time arch foe in the region.

Syria’s state news agency SANA had earlier reported that “our air defence systems confronted enemy targets in the vicinity of Damascus”.

Iran’s ambassador, Mr. Akbari, said that “the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate shows the reality of the Zionist entity which recognises no international laws and does all that is inhumane to achieve its goals”.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called for a “serious response by the international community”.

‘Heinous attack’

Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad also denounced the attack after visiting the site.

“We strongly condemn this heinous terrorist attack that targeted the Iranian consulate building in Damascus killing a number of innocent people,” Mr. Mekdad said in a statement carried by SANA.

The Gaza war, which started with the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, has devastated the coastal territory and also seen Israel and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah exchange near daily cross-border fire.

Israel has also struck targets in Syria, mostly army positions as well as those of Iran-backed combatants.

The Damascus strike came three days after the Observatory reported Israeli strikes that had killed 53 people in Syria, including 38 soldiers and seven members of Hezbollah.

It was the highest Syrian army toll in Israeli strikes since the Israel-Hamas war began, said the monitor.

“Syria and Lebanon have become one extended battleground from the Israeli perspective,” Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, told AFP after the Friday strikes.