Israel trying to pull Iran into deeper confrontation with Damascus killings, analysts say

The killing of Iranian and Tehran-allied commanders in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq in recent weeks has opened a ‘phase of reciprocal killings’

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The killing of top Iranian intelligence officers in Damascus on Saturday is an attempt to pull Tehran into a deeper regional confrontation over Israel’s war in Gaza and indicates a prolonged series of revenge killings across the Middle East, according to security officials and experts.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Israel of killing four of its “security advisers” in a strike in Damascus, including its intelligence chief in Syria and his deputy. Israel did not immediately comment on the accusations.

“The strike confirms that we are in a phase of reciprocal killings,” a security official in Beirut told media.

The attack happened weeks after the killing in Syria of Brig Gen Razi Mousavi, a senior IRGC military commander. Iran also accused Israel of being behind the attack and vowed to retaliate.

Earlier this month, an Israeli strike killed Saleh Al Arouri, the Iran-backed Hamas deputy leader in Beirut, followed by a strike in eastern Baghdad that killed three militants allied with Tehran. The next week, an Israeli strike killed the top commander in Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, Wissam al Tawil, in his car.

“This is going to be a long confrontation,” added the security official.

Saturday’s strike, which hit a residential building in the Syrian capital, came days after Iran launched a missile strike on the city of Erbil in northern Iraq.

Tehran said it had targeted an “Israeli spy base”, a claim Iraq’s federal government in Baghdad rejected.

The strike was a rare direct Iranian involvement in the regional confrontation over Israel’s war in Gaza.

The IRGC claimed the strikes were carried out in “response to the recent evil acts of the Zionist regime in martyring IRGC and resistance commanders” — in reference to the recent assassinations.

“It seems that the Iranian strike in Erbil, achieved its goal and hurt the Israelis, and that is why Israel responded in this way,” said political expert Wissam Bazzi.

But according to Joseph Daher, a regional scholar and expert who has written two books on Syria and the Lebanese Hezbollah group: “These days whenever there’s an opportunity [Israel] takes it.”

He added that Israel’s assassinations of the senior IRGC officials in Syria are a “continuation” of covert Israeli military operations on Iranian and Iran-affiliated figures that have taken place since the war in Syria began in 2011.

“It’s not new to target IRGC personalities in Syria, or even Hezbollah figures in Syria,” he said.

Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7 and the start of the devastating war in the Strip, Tehran has intensified operations through its axis of proxy militant groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen – all of which are operating in various degrees to exert pressure on Israel to cease its assault of the Gaza Strip.

Earlier this month, officials and militants told media that the Iran-backed armed factions in the Middle East had established a daily co-ordination process through a joint command since the start of the war, mainly focused on picking up targets and the timings of attacks against Israel and US forces.

“We should expect assassinations and bombings throughout this wide region, from Iran to the Axis countries led by Iran, in Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and even in Iran itself.