2024-02-02T11:50:50+00:00
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/ Iranian media announced on Friday that a Revolutionary Guards advisor named Saeed Ali Dadi was killed in an Israeli bombing that targeted the vicinity of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
The Iranian Basij-affiliated Student News Agency wrote that Ali Dadi was killed “in an attack by Israeli warplanes on the south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Friday morning.”
In turn, the semi-official Iranian Tasnim News Agency confirmed the news of Ali Dadi’s death in Syria, as a result of what it described as an Israeli “aggression” on southern Damascus.
Iranian media did not provide further information about Ali Dadi, or the rank or position he held in southern Damascus. Users and Iranian-backed militias posted a photo of the dead man on social media.
Iran uses the term “advisor” to refer to its military forces in Syria. It has said for years that its presence in the country is limited to this group, although many Western and local sources confirm that it has deployed foreign militias on the ground, most notably the Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun.
Asked about the strikes by Reuters, the Israeli military said on Friday it does not comment on reports in foreign media.
The Syrian regime’s defense ministry said on Friday that Israel launched missile strikes from the Golan Heights targeting areas south of Damascus, and that air defenses shot down some of them.
Meanwhile, the Al-Nujaba Movement, the most prominent militia supported by the Revolutionary Guards, confirmed the killing of Alidadi in strikes on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.
These strikes come after Reuters revealed, based on 5 sources, on Thursday, that the Revolutionary Guards had reduced its military presence in Syria, due to a series of Israeli strikes. The agency explained that it “will rely more on Shiite factions to maintain its influence there.”
While the sources added that Iran “has no intention of withdrawing from Syria,” the rethink highlights how the regional consequences of the war sparked by Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, are unfolding.
“Senior Iranian commanders, along with dozens of mid-ranking officers,” have left Syria over the past few days, said one source, a senior regional security official, describing it as a “downsizing.”
Three other sources indicated that the “Revolutionary Guards” expressed its concerns to the Syrian regime, that “the leakage of information from within the Syrian security forces played a role in the recent deadly strikes.”
Airstrikes attributed to Israel, without the latter claiming responsibility, in recent weeks resulted in the killing of senior leaders of the Revolutionary Guards in Syria.
The most prominent of these were the prominent general, Reza Mousavi, who was killed in the Sayyida Zeinab area, and the “intelligence officer of the Guards in Syria,” Sadegh Omidzadeh, in the Mazzeh Villas West area.