Iran general killed by Israel strike in Syria was on Hezbollah's top council: Report

A source close to Hezbollah reported that an Iranian general killed in an attack in the capital of Syria was a member of the influential Lebanese group’s Shura Council, which makes decisions.

The Iranian embassy’s consular annex in Damascus was destroyed by an airstrike on April 1, which also claimed the lives of seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), included two generals.

Among them was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a top commander in the Guards’ international operations division, the Quds Force.

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 Hassan Nasrallah, the source said, requesting anonymity because the matter is sensitive.

Nasrallah was set to speak on Monday to pay homage to Zahedi and his colleagues killed in the strike, which Tehran and Damascus have blamed on Israel.

In a previous speech, Nasrallah said his group “owed a lot” to the senior Iranian official.

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, 63, had held a succession of commands in a Guards career spanning more than 40 years, and was the most important Iranian military official killed since a United States missile strike at Baghdad airport in 2020 killed General Qasem Soleimani, who headed the Quds Force.

Tehran has promised to respond to the strike, which killed 16 people including two civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor of Syria’s years-long civil war.

(With agency inputs)