Iran vowed on Friday to avenge Israel’s killing of senior commanders and other elite Quds Force officers at a public funeral held for the dead, raising fears of open war but leaving unclear how and when it would respond.
US officials in Washington and the Middle East said on Friday they were bracing for possible Iranian retaliation for Monday’s Israeli air strike on Damascus, Syria. US military forces in the region have been put on high alert. Israel has also put its military on high alert, according to an Israeli official, canceled permission for combat units, recalled some reservists in air defense units and jammed GPS signals.
Two Iranian officials who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly said Iran had put all its armed forces on full alert and a decision had been made that Iran must respond immediately to the attack on Damascus to create a deterrent.
“Our brave men will punish the Zionist regime,” General Hossein Salami, head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, told a crowd in Tehran attending the funeral of officers killed in Damascus. “We warn that no action of any enemy against our sacred system will go unanswered, and the art of the Iranian nation is to break the power of empires.”
The Israeli airstrike hit a building that was part of the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, killing three generals and four other Quds force officers. The force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards, conducts military and intelligence operations outside Iran, often working closely with allies opposed to Israel and the United States, including Syria, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas.
Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeed Iravani, said on Thursday that he would give interviews to US news outlets “after Iran’s response to Israel”.
There are precedents for a forceful response from Iran. Four years ago, after the United States killed the head of the Quds Force, Major General Qassem Soleimani, Iran fired missiles at American bases in Iraq, injuring more than 100 soldiers.
Although its militias in the Middle East have launched various attacks on Israel since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas on October 7, Iran has been careful to avoid a direct conflict that could lead to full-scale war.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, delivered a video speech broadcast in Iran and Lebanon during the funeral, saying that a response from Iran could come at any time and that “we must be prepared for all eventualities ».
“Rest assured that the Iranian response to targeting Damascus is coming inevitably,” Mr Nasrallah said.
In recent months, Israel has killed at least 18 members of the Quds Force, including four senior commanders who were veterans of wars in the Middle East, according to Iranian media. But the Damascus airstrike was far out of the ordinary, both in killing so many senior officials at once and in hitting a diplomatic building, which is usually considered off-limits in conflicts. Israeli officials said the building served as a base for the Revolutionary Guards and was therefore a legitimate target.
The building housed the official residence of Iran’s ambassador to Syria, who told state television that he and his family had left the building when it was hit.
The final decision on a matter as important as the strike against Israel rests with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is also the head of the armed forces. It was Mr Khamenei who ordered the attack in 2020 in retaliation for the assassination of General Soleimani.
US military analysts say it is more likely that Iran will strike Israel itself than that its proxies will attack US troops in the region, including in Iraq and Syria, as they have done more than 170 times in the four months since Hamas. led the October 7 attack on Israel. Those attacks against US targets stopped in early February, but Pentagon officials said they were monitoring the situation closely.
An Israeli defense official said Israeli analysts had reached the same conclusion, that Iran would attack itself and not act through Hezbollah, its closest militant ally, which has engaged in regular firefights with Israeli forces since the start of the war.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ahead of a security cabinet meeting about a possible Iranian attack, said Thursday: “We will know how to defend ourselves and we will act on the simple principle that anyone who harms us or plans to harm us – we will hurt them”.
Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the top U.S. Air Force commander in the Middle East, told the Defense Writers Group in Washington this week: “From a military perspective, the biggest concern I have is, does this lead to some kind of regional escalation? We’re watching very closely, listening to what the Iranians are saying in terms of how they intend to respond.”
“I continue to appreciate that the Iranians are not interested in a broader regional conflict,” he added. “They want to exploit the crisis as it is, but they are not interested in war with Israel, war with the United States or war with anyone else right now.”
The funeral ceremony in Tehran on Friday coincided with the annual gathering for Quds Day, an event of solidarity with the Palestinians held on the last Friday of Ramadan in many Muslim countries. The crowd chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” and waved the Palestinian flag. In videos shown on state media, an angry crowd stomped on an effigy of Mr Netanyahu.
The Quds Day rally, held in several cities across Iran, attracts families with children and usually has a carnival-like atmosphere. But this year, the event appeared darker, overshadowed by the funeral, heightened tensions with Israel and fears that a response from Iran could spark war between the two countries.
Iranian President Ibrahim Raisi and Quds Force chief General Ismail Ghani, who was dressed in black civilian clothes instead of uniform, marched with the crowd of mourners in Tehran, state media showed. Also present were Ziyad al-Nakhaleh, the leader of the Islamic Palestinian Jihad, and Abu Fadak al-Muhammadawi, the head of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces, a Shiite militia aligned with Iran.
The coffins of the slain Quds Force officers, draped in the Iranian flag and placed in the back of trucks decorated with flowers and green leaves, slowly rolled down a long street in central Tehran where thousands of people had gathered.
The night before, the coffins were taken to the residential compound of Mr Khamenei, the supreme leader, and placed in an open hall where he performed the Muslim prayer for the dead on top of them. The ayatollah usually makes such honors only for very close associates and senior officials who have been declared “martyrs” for being killed by Israel or the United States.
Leyli Nikunazar contributed to the report.
