IRGC threatens ‘direct action’ against Israel over senior commander’s slaying

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned Israel on Wednesday that it or its allied groups would take “direct” action to avenge the killing of senior commander Razi Moussavi.

The IRGC general was killed Monday in an Israeli missile strike near the Syrian capital, according to state media, at a time of heightened regional tensions around the war raging in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

The Israel Defense Forces, which has allegedly launched hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets in war-torn Syria in recent years, said only that it does not comment on foreign media reports.

The body of Moussavi, a commander in the IRGC’s foreign operations arm the Quds Force, was taken to Iraq for funeral rites in Shiite Muslim holy sites a day ahead of his burial in Iran planned for Thursday.

IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif warned that “our response to Moussavi’s assassination will be a combination of direct action as well as (from) others led by the Axis of Resistance,” the local Mehr news agency reported.

Sharif charged that the Israeli killing of the general near Damascus “was likely due to its failures after the ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’” — a reference to the deadly October 7 assault Hamas launched against Israel.

People attended the funeral of a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in Najaf, Iraq, on Wednesday, December 27, 2023. (AP Photo/Anmar Khalil)

Some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were massacred amid scenes of horrific brutality, and around 240 were seized as hostages and dragged to Gaza as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists poured into Israel from the land, air and sea, launching devastating attacks on more than 20 different communities in southern Israel.

In response, Israel launched an aerial campaign and subsequent ground invasion in the Gaza Strip, vowing to topple Hamas and end the terror group’s 16-year rule.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said that since the start of the war, more than 20,000 people have been killed, mostly women and children. The figures reported by the health ministry are not verifiable, however, and do not differentiate between combatants and civilians. Israel believes that some 8,000 Hamas and Hamas-affiliated terrorists have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.

The deadly Hamas attack and the war in Gaza have reverberated across the Middle East, drawing attention from armed groups backed by Iran in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

Earlier this week, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned against allowing threats to fester along Israel’s border, saying that the military was dealing with threats on six of seven fronts, in what was seen as an implied message to Iran.

“We are in a multi-front war. We are being attacked from seven fronts — Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), Iraq, Yemen and Iran,” he said. “We have already responded and acted on six of those fronts.”

Shiite Muslim clerics and mourners pray over the coffin of Razi Moussavi, a senior commander in the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) who was killed on December 25 in an Israeli strike in Syria, during his funeral procession at the Imam Ali shrine in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf, on December 27, 2023. (Qassem al-Kaabi/AFP)

Iran, which supports Hamas financially and militarily, has hailed the deadly attacks against Israel by its proxies and allies as a “success” but denied any direct involvement.

President Ebrahim Raisi has said Iran sees it as “its duty to support the resistance groups” but insisted that they “are independent in their opinion, decision and action.”

Sharif claimed Moussavi’s killing was an Israeli attempt “to expand the war to other geographical areas.”

In Iraq, hundreds of mourners Wednesday flocked to attend memorial prayers for Moussavi, whose coffin was taken to the Imam Ali shrine in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf.

“America is the enemy of God,” some of them chanted.

The pallbearers included members of the Hashed al-Shaabi, mainly pro-Iranian former paramilitary units that have been integrated into Iraq’s regular armed forces.

His remains were then taken to Karbala, another shrine city, ahead of his repatriation to Iran.

Iran’s ambassador to Iraq, Mohammed al-Sadiq, told AFP that Moussavi’s death was the latest of the Israeli “enemy’s list of crimes.”

Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.