The Israeli airstrike on an Iranian diplomatic annex in Damascus on April 1, 2024–which killed 14 Iranian, Syrian, and Lebanese military advisors, plus 2 civilians–was a significant escalation during Israel’s pursuit of forces affiliated with the so-called “Axis of Resistance.”
"The consulate represents the independent territory of the country to which it belongs," according to Israeli Channel 12, summarizing the nature of the bombing in the Syrian capital as an attack on Iranian territory.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced the Israeli attack resulted in the killing of seven “military advisors,” including Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the Quds Force–the foreign external operations arm of the IRGC–described as a key figure in the Iran-Hezbollah relationship.
Reuters described the bombing of the Iranian “consulate” in Damascus as a form of escalation in the proxy war between Israel and Iran, which was a covert campaign against Iran’s agents throughout the region until it went overt in 2024 with this unprecedented airstrike. This was not the first Israeli attack against Iranian military installations or other facilities belonging to Tehan on Syrian soil, but it was the first time an Iranian diplomatic building was targeted.
The attack in Damascus drew widespread condemnation from Arab and Islamic circles. Iraq, Jordan, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates all condemned it while Lebanon’s Hezbollah, among Iran’s strongest and most loyal allies, promised retaliation with the statement, “This crime will not go unpunished.”
There was also strong criticism at the international level from Russia and China. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) condemned the “unacceptable” attack on the Iranian diplomatic compound, holding the Israeli military responsible for the strike. The MFA stated, “We call on the Israeli leadership to stop the provocative armed violence against Syria and the neighboring countries,” warning of, “extremely dangerous consequences for the region.”
Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the Chinese government “condemns,” the Israeli strike in Damascus, adding, “the security of diplomatic institutions cannot be violated and Syria’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial safety must be respected.
In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that the Chinese government "condemns" the Israeli-linked strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, which killed 11 people, including two IRGC commanders. He added that "the security of diplomatic institutions cannot be violated and Syria's sovereignty, independence, and territorial safety must be respected."
On the US side, the news website Axios reported on Tuesday, April 2, that the United States "informed Iran that it had no role or prior knowledge" of the strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria.
According to "Axios", the "rare message", as it described it, shows that "the administration of President Joe Biden is deeply concerned that the Israeli strike could cause a regional escalation and a resumption of Iranian-backed militias' attacks on US forces."
Israel has not commented on the attack, with Reuters quoting an Israeli military spokesman’s, “We do not comment on reports in the foreign media,” response to query. But the US Department of Defense confirmed Israel’s involvement while denying any American role in the airstrike.
Let us calmly read the series of recent events and reciprocal strikes between the Axis of Resistance and the Western-backed camp–which includes Israel, the United States, the European Union, and some other Western countries.
Before going into the details, we must understand the combined forces of the so-called Axis of Resistance, its actual size and real goals for the region.
The Axis includes armed Shia extremist militias that are participating in the civil wars in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria after historically doing the same in Lebanon. It is allied with Syria’s Assad regime and has a tremendous influence over political decision-making in all of these countries. It also cooperates with Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements, deriving its name and supposed legitimacy from purporting to support the Palestinian cause.
The term “Axis of Resistance,” was first used by Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, as well as Iranian officials and media outlets in response to George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” speech condemning Iran, Ba’athist Iraq, and North Korea. It has crystallized without a spoken agreement, a formal union, or an institutional organizational structure but instead as an idea influenced by growing Arab divisions. This has been influenced by the trend of some countries to make peace agreements with Israel–most notably Egypt–as well as the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran and Israel’s military superiority made possible by US support.
Iran’s theocratic regime has worked to export its revolution for decades, particularly to the Arab region and the Islamic world in general, but the Axis originated with the establishment of Hezbollah, “the Party of God,” in 1982 during the Lebanese Civil War. It was formed after a visit by Lebanese Shia fundamentalists to Tehran and their meeting with Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and siege of Beirut. This would go down in history as “the first spark of the Axis of Resistance.”
The most prominent roles the Axis went on to play were the Israeli withdrawal from the Lebanese borderlands in 2000 and subsequent role in the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah–as well as their expansion after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the outbreak of war in Syria after 2011.
Iran since the early 1990s has also supported Palestinian militant groups who rejected the Oslo Agreement. This and their support for Hezbollah in Lebanon became the nucleus of the Axis of Resistance after the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003, during which they infiltrated Iraq to take advantage of the resulting chaos.
They managed to “establish and spread its affiliated Shiite militias in Iraq that carry the known Khomeini ideology of the Guardianship of the Jurist, which is the ideology of the Iranian regime". They were also allied with the Assad regime and after 2011 were able to expand into Syria by establishing militias with the same ideology in order to keep the regime in power–once again taking advantage of chaos to expand their influence.
Iran, whose leaders have previously claimed that it "controls four Arab capitals," uses its influence to control political decision-making in these countries according to its interests and even to trade this political influence for other gains with major powers in the region.
For example, in 2018, when negotiations with the West over Iran's nuclear file reached a stalemate, Iran announced that it could not make concessions on its nuclear file but that it could negotiate on Yemen.
Iran has also recently announced through its top military leaders that "it largely controls the Red Sea and international navigation passing through the region," after the Ansar Allah Houthi group began targeting ships heading to Israel in the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Possessing power cards in the region allows Iran to use these cards to serve its interests, achieving many economic benefits as well. Having a belt of countries around Iran with armed forces loyal to it is in the interest of Iran's national security, as it provides protection for Iran and keeps Iranian territory out of reach. Even if any targeting occurs, it will be outside Iranian territory. In this way, Iran can wield great influence, not only over the countries in which its militias are deployed but also over other countries.
There has been a back-and-forth of extraordinary violence since October 7th between the Axis of Resistance and the Western-backed camp.
Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, and Hamas and Islamic Jihad initially kidnapped about 242 hostages, while Israel estimated the number of casualties at 1200. Israel responded to the attack by launching a full-scale war on Gaza, with more than 30,000 Palestinian casualties so far, according to the Gaza government media office. However, Hamas was ready to launch hundreds of rockets and shells, use drones to drop bombs and deploy an unlimited amount of small arms and ammunition.
Iran makes no secret about supporting the countries and entities affiliated with the Axis. Since Hamas's inception, it has played a significant role in supporting it. Today, the United States says that although there is no evidence of Iran's direct involvement in Hamas's attack on Israel, it believes that Iran has played a role by funding the movement's military wing during the past years.
Just one day after Hamas's attack, Hezbollah in Lebanon announced targeting Israeli sites in the Shebaa Farms. The Israeli army responded by shelling a tent affiliated with the party, which led to an escalation of attacks and an exchange of fire between these two sides since then. The party daily announces targeting some Israeli military sites and points, while the Israeli army responds with air and artillery shelling as they mean to target the party's "infrastructure" and movements of fighters near the border.
The exchange of shelling between Hezbollah and the Israeli army has so far killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and dozens of civilians in Lebanon–another 100,000 people on the Lebanese side of the border have been displaced by the bombing. The casualties include Hamas’s political bureau deputy chief Saleh al-Arouri on January 2, 2024 in a southern Beirut suburb and Wissam al-Tawil, deputy commander of Hezbollah’s Radwan Force, in Southern Lebanon. At least 21 soldiers and 10 civilians in Israel have also been killed, while more than 96,000 Israeli civilians from the border region remain displaced.
The international standoff between the Axis of Resistance and the Western-backed camp has spilled over out of the Levant and into other conflict zones where Iranian-backed militant groups have been active for years.
In Yemen, the Houthis continue carrying out attacks in the Red Sea near the Bab al-Mandab Strait, claiming to only target ships linked to Israel or countries allied with Israel in order to support the Palestinians, demanding a ceasefire and the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip. But ships with no apparent links to Israel or Israeli allies, including a Panama-flagged vessel targeted on December 3, 2023 have also been targeted in drone and missile strikes. This amounts to indiscriminate attacks against freedom of navigation in the Red Sea while the Houthis prioritize “fighting the West and elevating themselves to global prominence.”
US and British military forces have carried out dozens of retaliatory airstrikes and cruise missile attacks since January 12, 2023 targeting Houthi military sites in Sanaa as well as the provinces of Hodeidah, Taiz, Hajjah, and Saada.
Since the Gaza War began, the "Islamic Resistance in Iraq", which includes Iranian-allied armed factions linked to the Popular Mobilization Forces, has announced their involvement in several attacks on American bases housing American and international coalition forces fighting ISIS. At least 103 attacks against coalition forces in Iraq and Syria were documented between October 7 and December 25, 2023, according to the US Department of Defense.
The crisis between the Iraqi Resistance and the Americans worsened after the killing of three US soldiers in a January 28 drone attack by Iranian-backed Iraqi armed groups on Tower 22, an American military base on the border between Jordan and Syria. US President Joe Biden authorized retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq and Syria on February 2nd–this was soon followed by a drone strike in Baghdad that killed Abu Baqir al-Saadi, a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander, on February 7th.
Despite Iran's expansion and extension of its influence in several Arab countries–even while many observers believe that Ali Khamenei and the IRGC are eying Jordan as a target–the severity of strikes received by “the Resistance” is far worse than those received by the Western-backed camp, both in terms of quantity and quality.
Before the April 1st consulate strike in Damascus, Israel was attributed to an attack in the al-Mazzeh Villas area, which killed 5 IRGC commanders, and another in Sayyida Zeinab killed Brigadier General Razi Mousavi, the IRGC’s senior officer in Syria.
Israeli airstrikes also targeted military installations in Aleppo, northern Syria, killing 32 members of Iranian-backed militias including Lebanese Hezbollah. Among these strikes, more than 5 IRGC commanders were killed in separate attacks between Damascus, its surrounding countryside, and the central city of Homs.
However, unlike the previous attacks, the strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus is an exceptional event by all standards.
Before October 7, Israel focused its targeting on leaders and members of proxies, equipment, and missiles being prepared in Syria, either for local use or in transit to Lebanon–Israel at this stage avoided directly targeting Iranian military officers and personnel.
But after October 7, Israel carefully read the reluctance of Iran and the so-called Resistance to engage in a more direct, open confrontation and expanded its assassination operations in Syria to include sites where Iranians were present. Israel also took advantage of this situation to increase Iranian casualties in Syria and those of Hezbollah in Lebanon, while retaliatory strikes into northern Israel resulted in far fewer Israelis killed or wounded.
Israel's recent attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus marks an attempt to establish new rules of engagement with Iran. Targeting high-ranking Iranian officials in a place tantamount to sovereign Iranian territory under international law served as a calculated test of Iran’s threshold for retaliation without triggering a full-blown regional war.
Amidst Israeli political circles, there are indications that the country may be preparing for a war with Hezbollah. This is evidenced by the targeting of key Hezbollah infrastructure and personnel involved in supplying the organization with arms and equipment. This targeted action is seen as a preemptive measure ahead of a large-scale Israeli operation in the Rafah area.
Iran has partially justified its lack of retaliation to Israeli attacks in the past by emphasizing that the targets were located in Syria and Damascus lacked the will to respond. This justification no longer made sense, however, after a strike targeting the equivalent of Iranian territory on Syrian soil. Launching retaliatory attacks against targets in Erbil or Idlib under the dubious claim of hitting Israeli bases, which previously allowed them to maintain the image of strength while avoiding the risk of serious consequences, no longer sufficed.
This prompted the Axis to carry out Operation True Promise, the largest drone and rocket attack thus far recorded in history throughout the night of April 13 to April 14, 2024 to maintain a semblance of credibility. More than 100 medium-range ballistic missiles, 30 land attack cruise missiles, and 162 loitering munitions–popularly known as “suicide drones,” comprised the largest escalation of tensions in the Middle East since Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990.
This could have been the start of an unprecedented regional war had the Western-backed camp not thrown their combined might at deflecting the aerial barrage.
Operation Iron Shield saw Israel cooperate with US, British, French, and Jordanian military forces to shoot down approximately 330 flying bombs launched from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen by the IRGC and allies such as Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Islamic Resistance of Iraq. Airspace across the Levant was closed shortly before the attack commenced but empty skies were soon flooded with the lights and fire from drones and missiles chased by squadrons of military aircraft.
The Western-backed camp managed to down the vast majority of incoming projectiles, although possibly as many as 50 percent, “failed upon launch or in flight due to technical issues,” an anonymous US Air Force officer told The Intercept. The officer claimed that a majority of the functional drones and missiles were shot down by American forces, contradicting statements issued by the Israeli government on the morning of April 14.
No deaths were reported as a result of the aerial battle, although one Bedouin Arab child with Israeli citizenship (Editor’s note: Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, whose ancestors were spared from displacement during the Nakba, are known as “Israeli Arabs,” and make up a quarter of Israel’s population) was wounded by shrapnel. Seven-year-old Amina Houssana, from a Bedouin village near Arad, was hospitalized for her injuries–the media attention her family received was followed up with an order from Israeli authorities to demolish their house. But outrage from both Palestinians and even liberal Israelis pressured the government to backpedal and ultimately cancel the demolition order.
A majority of the Axis drones and missiles were shot down over Syria and Jordan, plus Iraq to a lesser extend. Daraa, the Golan Heights, and the sparsely-populated Syria-Iraq border saw a particularly large number of overhead interceptions. US troops based in Al-Tanf, as well as in Northeast Syria and on the Jordan-Syria border, also contributed to Operation Iron Shield with their own air defense systems.
Here we can zoom out and realize how much this entire story of geopolitical conflict has centered around Syria, which has effectively been used as a free-fire zone by Israel and Iran.
Recent events, particularly the ongoing skirmishes between the so-called Axis of Resistance and the Western-backed camp, point to significant vulnerabilities within the Iranian-led alliance prevalent not only in Syria but also Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, and even Iran itself. Attempts to protect themselves through troop withdrawals and redeployment have consistently proven futile, largely due to security breaches and Israel's significant technological advantage in espionage.
Iran is currently incapable of matching the intensity of Israeli strikes and Israel is aware of this, particularly in the wake of unwavering Western support during its war in Gaza. The world largely supports and even applauds Israel’s actions, despite the horrifying daily reports of civilians killed en masse by the IDF. A hypothetical regional war between Israel and the Axis of Resistance would likely have further unconditional support from Western countries, leading Israel to believe they have time to reestablish regional dominance.
Recent IDF actions in Gaza suggest that their ambitions may extend beyond the Palestinian territory. Recent weeks have witnessed heightened tensions across the region, in part due to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s arrogant, hubristic leadership while his political career hangs by a thread. This embattled head of state, facing an imminent criminal trial for bribery and fraud as soon as he leaves office, has consistently prioritized his political and personal interests over the lives and wellbeing of his fellow citizens.
The Iranian-led Axis will likely prioritize avoiding full-scale regional war after engaging in half-hearted responses to save face, potentially making concessions on various fronts in the near future to deescalate hostilities.
People in the region, particularly Syrians, must recognize that expelling Iranian forces will not come without a heavy price. The forces seeking Iran's removal from Syria will likely fill its vacuum, potentially leading to even more detrimental consequences.
Iran's expansion in the region has taken on a form of settler-colonialism, with military installations established across the land. Furthermore, some locals are forced to sell their homes, properties, and land to Iranians, often through extortion involving Syrian intelligence agencies. Additionally, the imposition of a Persian cultural identity on Syrian cities is evident, with attempts to erase local identity through various means.
Although the animosity of Free Syrians towards the Iranian regime and their allies is deeply rooted in history, it is also crucial not to let this overshadow the ongoing conflict with Israel while they continue to occupy Syria’s Golan Heights.
