Naharnet adds a crucial detail to the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Mohammad Reza Zahedi last week.
An Iranian general killed in a strike in Syria's capital was a member of Hezbollah's Shura Council, the powerful Lebanese group's decision-making body, a source close to the movement said.The April 1 air strike levelled the Iranian embassy's consular annex in Damascus, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members, including two generals.One of them was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, the Guards' foreign operations arm.Zahedi was the only non-Lebanese on Hezbollah's eight-member Shura Council, the equivalent of the powerful Shiite Muslim movement's political bureau, led by secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the source said, requesting anonymity because the matter is sensitive.Nasrallah in a speech Monday paid homage to Zahedi and his colleagues killed in the strike, which Tehran and Damascus have blamed on Israel.Zahedi "lived with us for long years, away from the spotlight, and provided important services to the resistance in Lebanon and the whole region," Nasrallah said Friday during a televised address.
Zahedi was essentially a top member of Hezbollah, not merely an adviser. That might have tipped the decision to kill him in the Iranian embassy compound. It appears to have been a legal strike anyway, but this strengthens Israel's legal case, as they were attacking a member of a group that they are actively engaged in hostilities against.
