Beijing, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Mohammad al-Bagheri, chief of the general staff of the Iranian armed forces, said on Dec. 26 that Israel had made a "strategic mistake" by killing Iran's top general, Sayyid Razi Mousavi, and would pay the price. On the same day, the Iranian military released an animation simulating the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu**.
Mousavi, a senior commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a military adviser in Syria, died on the afternoon of the 25th near Damascus, the Syrian capital. According to Iran**, Israeli missiles hit Mousavi residence. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed later on the 25th that Mousavi died in an Israeli missile attack.
This is the landmark Freedom Tower, photographed in Tehran, the capital of Iran, on January 1, 2021. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Ahmad Harabisas) According to Iran's Tasnim News Agency, Bagheri pointed out on the 26th that Israel's attack on Mousavi, who served as an adviser in Syria, exposed Israel's "terrorist nature" and its "flagrant violation of Syria's sovereignty", "violation of international conventions", and "strategic mistakes", to which the Iranian side "will not fail to respond".
According to al-Bagheri, by attacking Mousavi, Israel is trying to "get out of the quagmire that Israel has created in the Gaza Strip" and divert international attention from its crimes in the area. However, instead of helping to prop up its "shaky" regime, this move will cause "the Resistance Front to tighten its encirclement of it."
Mousavi was the highest-ranking commander of the Iraqi armed forces killed in an attack outside Iran after the late senior general Qassem Soleimani. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Mousavi was one of the oldest and most experienced advisers to the IRGC in Syria and a comrade-in-arms of Soleimani.
On January 6, 2020, Iranians saw off Soleimani in Tehran, the capital of Iran. Xinhua News Agency (Photo by Ahmad Harabisas) Soleimani, a senior commander of the "Quds Force" under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in a US airstrike in Baghdad, Iraq, in January 2020. During his lifetime, Soleimani made great contributions to strengthening Iran's influence in the Middle East and promoting Iran's relations with Iraq and Syria, and was regarded as a thorn in the side of Israel and the United States.
Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in March 2011, the Israeli army has repeatedly carried out air strikes on targets in Syria under the pretext of striking Iranian military installations. Both Syria and Iran have denied that Iran has troops in Syria, saying that Iran has only sent military advisers at the invitation of Syria. ** The death of Mousavi in the attack has increased the risk of a new round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Lebanese Allah condemned Israel's attack on Mousavi as "appalling" in a statement on the 25th. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Jihad) condemned the Israeli attack as an "act of cowardice" and said Mousavi played an important role in supporting the Palestinian people and their cause. (Jiang Guopeng).