2023-12-27 08:27:11
Brigadier General Razi Moussavi (left) alongside General Ghassem Soleimani, assassinated in January 2020. Undated photo transmitted by the Iranian Tasnim news agency on December 25, 2023. AFP
Tensions between Iran and Israel are rising again. On Monday, December 25, at 4 p.m. local time in Damascus, the highest ranking member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria, Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, was killed by “three Israeli missiles”, announced Tehran. This targeted assassination is part of the undeclared war that the Islamic Republic and the Jewish state have been waging for two decades and which the conflict in Gaza has exacerbated. Mr. Moussavi is the most senior official of the “axis of resistance” eliminated by Israel since the death of Imad Moughniyeh, one of the main military leaders of Hezbollah, the armed wing of Tehran in Lebanon, killed in the explosion of a car bomb in 2008 in Damascus.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers Iran reactivates, from Lebanon to Yemen, the fronts against Israel
Presented as “an anti-terrorism advisor” to the Syrian regime by the Iranian Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Razi Moussavi was responsible for military coordination between the forces allied to the Revolutionary Guards (Tehran’s ideological army) in the region. Or the various pro-Iranian militias deployed in Syria and Iraq, but also the Lebanese Hezbollah, which confronts the Israeli army daily in support of Palestinian Hamas. Since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011, the Iranian regime has constantly used the term “ advise ” to justify the presence of its soldiers in this country, an ally of Tehran.
In an undated photo taken more than ten years ago and distributed in recent hours on X accounts (formerly Twitter) close to the Iranian regime, Razi Moussavi, alias “Seyyed Razi” (a term designating a “descendant » of the prophet by family lineage in the nomenclature of the Islamic Republic), poses, with a concentrated air, near Hassan Nasrallah, secretary general of Lebanese Hezbollah, whom he had known for more than twenty-five years. A second image, broadcast by Iranian television, shows him smiling with General Ghassem Soleimani, the former head of Iranian foreign operations until his assassination by the United States on January 3, 2020.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers What is the “axis of resistance” promoted by Iran against Israel and the United States?
“Strategic error”
At the time, the latter’s death was seen by the Iranian regime as a humiliation. He then promised “fierce vengeance”. Tehran responded well, targeting an American base in Iraq, but took care to give the soldiers established there time to take shelter before bombing it. The attack, carried out with ballistic missiles, nevertheless left several dozen injured. On Monday, Razi Mousavi was killed days before the fourth anniversary of Ghassem Soleimani’s death, potentially embarrassing Tehran and exposing the vulnerability of its officers deployed abroad.
You have 60% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
#Iran #vows #Israel #pay #high #price #murder #Razi #Mousavi