The head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) declared on Wednesday that Israel will “pay” for the recent killing of an IRGC officer in Syria.
Saeed Abyar was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Aleppo, a northern city in Syria, early Monday, according to Iranian media reports.
“Zionist child-killing criminals should know that they will pay for the pure blood shed in this crime – they should await a response,” the IRGC’s commander-in-chief, Hossein Salami, said in a statement carried by the state-affiliated Tasnim news agency.
Salami described Abyar as being on an “advisory mission” in Syria. Iran has been a steadfast ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, providing various forms of support during Syria’s ongoing 13-year civil war. While IRGC-affiliated militias are known to operate in Syria, Tehran asserts that it has only deployed military advisors to the conflict.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Monday’s Israeli strike in Aleppo killed 16 pro-Iran fighters, including both Syrian and foreign combatants.
Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Iran-linked targets and Syrian military positions in Syria since the civil war began. These strikes have intensified following the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on October 7. However, the frequency of such strikes decreased after a significant April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, attributed to Israel, which heightened regional tensions and led to Iran’s first-ever direct attack on Israel.
While Israel generally does not comment on specific strikes in Syria, it has consistently stated that it will not permit Iran to expand its influence in the country.
The Syrian conflict, which began in 2011 after a government crackdown on anti-government protests, has resulted in the deaths of over half a million people and displaced millions more.
