Iran Says Israeli Strike in Syria Killed One of Its Generals

BEIRUT, Lebanon — An Iranian general was among the dead in an Israeli airstrike that also killed several Hezbollah fighters in southern Syria over the weekend, the official Iranian news media announced on Monday.

The announcement compounded the tension and unpredictability in the region stemming from the strike, which placed Israel in a direct battlefield confrontation on Syrian soil with its longtime enemies Iran and Hezbollah.

The death of the general, Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, also added to the evidence of Iran’s deep military involvement in Syria’s civil war.

General Allahdadi’s death was announced on the website of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and by news media affiliated with Hezbollah and the Iranian government.

The Iranian announcement said that he had been inspecting the region of Quneitra, near the disputed Golan Heights, which is occupied by Israel.
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The announcement also said the general had been advising Syrians on how to fight terrorism, which is how Damascus characterizes its battle against an insurgency that began nearly four years ago with peaceful protests for political reforms. It now includes fighters from the Islamic State and the Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Iran’s government has long said it is advising and training Syrian loyalist forces, and Iran’s proxy Hezbollah has openly declared that it is fighting in Syria. Syrian insurgents have long insisted that Iranian troops are directly involved on the battlefield.

A deliberate killing of an Iranian general would represent an escalation in the hostility between Israel and Iran.

It remained unclear on Monday whether Israel had deliberately targeted individuals in two vehicles that were fired on by an Israeli helicopter on Sunday. The Israeli news media, citing anonymous intelligence sources, said that the fighters targeted had been planning an attack on Israel from Syria — which would also represent an escalation.

Up to now, Israel, Iran, Hezbollah and others, including the United States, have engaged in delicate maneuvering in Syria, with each intervening according to its own interests while largely avoiding direct confrontation or retaliation.

Also killed in Sunday’s strike was Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah military commander who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008 in an attack that Hezbollah attributes to Israel. A senior Hezbollah commander was also said to have been killed.

Israel has not commented officially on the strike. On Monday, Eyal Ben-Reuven, a retired Israeli major general with extensive experience on the northern front with Lebanon and Syria, said in a conference call with international journalists that the presence of such a high-ranking Iranian figure alongside Hezbollah commanders near the Golan Heights area suggested that they may have been “planning an operation against Israel on a high level.”

“It’s a significant point because before, when Hezbollah retaliates, sometimes we knew that Iran tried to push to a high level of retaliation and Hezbollah tried to prevent it,” General Ben-Reuven said. “Now it’s common interests between Hezbollah and Iran to retaliate.”

He and other Israeli analysts said they continued to believe that Hezbollah wants to avoid a serious engagement with Israel because it is so heavily committed in Syria. Still, Israel’s security cabinet was to meet Tuesday morning to discuss concerns about escalation in the north, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.

NYTimes.com