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A spokesman for Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has said that Israel will face a “harsh revenge” for the assassination of Brigade General Seyed Razi Mousavi.
Brigadier General Ramezan Sharif made the remarks during a news conference on December 27, just two days after the senior IRGC commander was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in the southern outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus.
Asked whether Iran will retaliate directly to or through the “Axis of Resistance,” a network of regional armed factions supported by the IRGC, Sharif said that “a combination of the two will certainly be carried out.”
The spokesman argued that Israel targeted Mousavi due to the “irreparable defeats” it suffered following the October 7 Hamas-led surprise attack from the Gaza Strip. “[Israel killed Mousavi] in order to get rid of the pressure of the relentless attacks of the resistance front in Gaza.”
“We will respond accordingly, directly or indirectly through the resistance axis,” Shairf threatened.
He further called the assassination of Mousavi an “act of terror” and vowed the response “will be decisive at the right time and place.”
Mousavi was in charge of providing “logistical support to the Axis of Resistance in Syria,” the IRGC said in the statement announcing his death on December 25, adding that he was a “companion” of late Quds Force commander Major General Qasem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States in Iraq around four years ago.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency described Mousavi as one of the “most experienced advisors” of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force.
Senior Iranian officials, including President Ebrahim Rasi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, have vowed revenge for Mousavi’s death. Lebanon’s Hezbollah said that it regards the killing as a “flagrant and shameless violation,” according to Iran’s state-owned Press TV.
Asked on December 26 about the assassination of Mousavi, iIsrael’s military chief Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi declined to comment but said Israeli forces work throughout the region.
Over the past decade, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes against both Iranian-backed factions and Syrian military forces inside Syria. Israel escalated strikes on the country after the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
