At Friday’s funeral for seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards—two of whom were generals—who were killed in an airstrike in Syria that Iran said was the result of an Israeli strike, thousands of mourners screamed anti-Israel and anti-American slogans.
Israel “cannot escape the consequences” of Monday’s attack, which destroyed the five-story consular annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, according to chief of staff of the Guards General Hossein Salami.
Analysts saw this strike as an extension of Israel’s campaign against Iran and its regional proxies, perhaps leading to a bigger battle than the Israel-Hamas confrontation in the Gaza Strip. Israel has not yet responded to the strike.
Friday’s ceremony coincided with annual Quds (Jerusalem) Day commemorations, when Iran and its allies organise marches in support of the Palestinians.
Quds Day rallies also took place in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain while in Lebanon the head of the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement delivered a speech.
Two brigadier generals from the Guards’ international operations branch, the Quds Force, Muhammad Hadi Haji Rahimi and Muhammad Reza Zahedi, were reportedly among the deceased, according to Iran.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in Britain, Zahedi, 63, was in charge of the Quds Force in the Palestinian Territories, Syria, and Lebanon.
Throughout his more than 40-year career, he had held a number of posts. He was the highest-ranking Iranian soldier to die since General Qassem Soleimani, the chief of the Quds Force, was killed in 2020 by an American missile strike at the Baghdad airport.
The coffins of the seven were placed on the trailers of two trucks in one of the largest squares in Tehran.
Mourners held Iranian, Palestinian flags and Hezbollah flags, chanting “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!”.
