Iran Issues Ominous Threat to Israel After IRGC Commander Killed

Iran has warned Israel that it will "pay the price" after allegedly killing a top Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) adviser in Syria.

Iranian state media reported that IRGC adviser Sayyed Razi Mousavi was killed in an airstrike near the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Monday. The death of Mousavi, who was reportedly the chief coordinator of the Iran-Syria military alliance, was confirmed to Reuters by three security sources.

Mousavi was reportedly described by Iranian state television as "among those accompanying Qassem Soleimani," the deceased leader of IRGC's Quds Force. Soleimani was killed in Iraq by a U.S. drone strike in January 2020.

IRGC said in a statement that "the usurper and savage Zionist regime will pay for this crime." Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi similarly said that Israel would "certainly pay the price" for Mousavi's death, calling it "a sign of the Zionist regime's frustration and weakness in the region."

Raisi also said that Mousavi "was martyred while serving as an advisor for the resistance front, defending holy shrines in Syria as well as safeguarding Islamic ideals," according to the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group reportedly condemned the killing as "a cowardly act" while praising Mousavi for supporting the Palestinian cause.

While Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not officially confirmed that it was responsible for Mousavi's death, Haaretz reported that Israel was preparing for a potential retaliatory strike from the north.

The IDF declined Newsweek's request for comment.

Mousavi was far from the first Iranian target to reportedly be killed by Israel inside Syria. Two other IRGC advisers in Syria were purportedly killed in an Israeli strike earlier this month.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the Israeli military launched its strike on Mousavi after he entered a farm thought to be serving as an office for the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah, according to the Associated Press.

The Israeli military has been engaging with Hezbollah in the north since shortly after the current Gaza-focused Israeli-Palestinian conflict began with a surprise attack by the militant group Hamas on October 7. The IDF has warned that hostilities may escalate further.

"Hezbollah, who as everybody knows is a proxy of Iran, is dangerously dragging Lebanon into an unnecessary war that could have potential devastating consequences for the state of Lebanon and for the people of Lebanon," IDF spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said last week.

Newsweek reported earlier this year on intelligence indicating that Iran-backed military unit "Imam Hossein Division" had positioned itself as "the Quds Force's most elite fighting force in Syria."

An IDF official said last month that the division had "come to the aid of Hezbollah" and "arrived in southern Lebanon."

Update 12/26/23, 10:49 a.m. ET: This article was updated to reflect that the Israel Defense Forces declined to comment.