Mohammad Reza Zahedi

Mohammad Reza Zahedi was the senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander killed when Israel struck the Iranian consular building in Damascus on 1 April 2024, an attack that led to the first direct Iranian assault on Israeli territory. He had commanded the Guard's ground forces and its air force at different times and had run the Quds Force operation in Syria and Lebanon for years, which made him the principal link between Tehran and Hezbollah. He was the most senior Iranian officer killed since Qasem Soleimani in 2020. The building hit was an annexe of the embassy, and Iran argued that striking diplomatic premises breached the Vienna Convention; Israel did not acknowledge the strike, as is its practice. Thirteen days later Iran launched more than three hundred drones and missiles directly at Israel from its own territory - the first time it had ever done so, after decades of operating through proxies - and almost all were intercepted by Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Jordan. Israel replied with a limited strike near Isfahan. The exchange was widely read as both sides establishing that they could reach each other while trying not to begin a general war, and it moved the confrontation out of the shadows for the first time. Six other Guard officers died with him, including his deputy. Iran called the reply Operation True Promise and announced it in advance through intermediaries, which is generally read as an attempt to make interception likely. Whether deterrence between the two states now runs through direct exchange rather than through Hezbollah and the Iraqi militias is the open question the episode raised.

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