Iran’s defense minister threatened to take revenge on Israel after a high-ranking general was killed in Syria.
“At the right time and in the right place, we will respond strongly to the weak Zionist enemy (Israel),” Mohamad Reza Ashtiani said on Wednesday, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.
General Seyed Razi Mousavi of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was killed on Monday in an alleged Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of Damascus, the Syrian capital.
According to the New York Times, Mousavi helped oversee the supply of weapons to the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which has repeatedly attacked northern Israel in support of Hamas since the start of the Gaza war.
Israel frequently attacks sites in war-torn Syria to prevent Iran from expanding its military influence in the region through local militias.
Mousavi was a confidant of the powerful IRGC general Qassem Soleimani, who was killed by the United States in a drone strike in Iraq in 2020, Tasnim writes.
Although little was previously known about General Mousavi, he was considered one of the most influential officers of the Revolutionary Guard abroad.
