A rocket attack in Damascus on Sunday blamed on Israel hit an installation where Iranian officials were meeting on developing drone or missile capabilities of allies in Syria, sources told Reuters.
Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's nearly 12-year conflict. Its support for Damascus and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has drawn regular Israeli air strikes meant to curb Tehran's extraterritorial military power.
A source close to the Syrian government with knowledge of Sunday's strike and its target said it hit a gathering of Syrian and Iranian technical experts in drone manufacturing, though he said no top-level Iranian was killed.
"The strike hit the center where they were meeting as well as an apartment in a residential building. One Syrian engineer and one Iranian official - not high-ranking - were killed," the source told Reuters.
This rocket strike, along with others that Israel says target infrastructure of Syria's military and its allies, reflect an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict aimed at slowing down Iran's growing entrenchment in Syria, according to Israeli military experts.
Syrian state media said at the time that Israel had carried out air strikes shortly after midnight on Sunday against several areas of the Syrian capital, causing five deaths and 15 injuries including civilians.
An Israeli military official declined to confirm or deny that Israel was behind the attack but said some of the casualties were caused by errant Syrian anti-aircraft fire.
The United States and Israel have been increasingly concerned about Iran’s drone manufacturing, and the possibility it would pass on those capabilities to regional proxies such as the heavily armed Hezbollah.
A second source, who spoke to Syrian security personnel briefed on the matter, said Iranians were attending the meeting of technical experts in a Iranian military installation in the basement of a residential building inside a security compound.
He said one of those killed was a Syrian army civil engineer who worked at Syria's Scientific Studies and Research Centre, which Western countries say is a military institution that has produced missiles and chemical weapons. Damascus denies this.
A regional security source said one Revolutionary Guards engineer involved in Iran’s missile program was seriously injured and transferred to a hospital in Tehran, while two other mid-ranking Guards members at the meeting were unharmed.
Another source, a regional intelligence official familiar with the strike, said the target was part of a covert guided missile production program run by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
A fifth, regional source with knowledge of the strike and its target, said officials from Iran and Hezbollah had been targeted. The Lebanese group has sent fighters to help Assad drive back rebels who once nearly encircled Damascus.
REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS LOGISTICS CENTRE HIT?
The targeted building was located in the Damascus neighborhood of Kafr Sousa, a heavily policed area where residents say several Iranian security agencies are located, along with an Iranian cultural centre.
Two Western intelligence sources said at the time the target was a logistics center run by the Revolutionary Guards.
Hezbollah's top commander Imad Moughniyeh was killed in 2008 in a bombing in the same neighborhood. Israel denied Hezbollah accusations that it was behind the assassination.
Although officials rarely acknowledge responsibility for specific operations, Israel has been carrying out air strikes on suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in Syria for almost a decade.
Israel has also in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt Iran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.
Exclusive report by Laila Bassam and Suleiman Al-Khalidi of Reuters
In a speech Sunday, Javad Emam, the CEO of Khatami’s Baran Foundation, which he set up after his presidency came to an end in 2005, argued that the dictatorship’s acting against the will of the people, means they “are the ones actually causing regime change”.
Speaking at the Veterans Society Party’s 4th congress, Emam, the party's secretary general, strongly criticized the government’s foreign policy including regional policies which he said “drove Iran's Arab neighbors to Israel’s bosom”.
Addressing party members, which consist mainly of reformist veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, he said the country's foreign policy had also failed to restore the 2015 nuclear deal which has “resulted in the poverty and misery of Iran and Iranians”, and spurred Iran's collaboration with Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Iran has been supplying military drones to Russia since mid-2022, which Moscow has used to target Ukraine’s infrastructure. The United States and European powers have strongly warned Tehran to cease its military cooperation with Russia.
Khatami’s aide warned the government that “in the near future people will no longer listen to them if it does not listen to the voice of people”.
Emam’s sharp criticism comes on the heels of unprecedented popular protests and statements by other key reformist figures who have either called for a referendum to change the regime or serious and fundamental changes in Iran’s politics and economy.
Khatami said in November that regime change, as protesters demanded on the streets, was “neither possible, nor desirable” due to the inequality of the powers of the government and the people. But he also warned the hardliner establishment over continuing the status quo which he said would only deepen the prospects of “societal collapse”. He proposed reforms in the system as the “least costly and most useful” way out of the current quagmire the regime has gotten itself into.
The Green Movement leader Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was a presidential candidate in 2009 and has been under house arrest since 2011, however, in a statement on February 4, declared that the Islamic Republic was no longer reformable and fundamental change was required to “save Iran”. He proposed elections to appoint a constitutional assembly to write a new constitution and a referendum on the new constitution and its proposed form of government.
A day after Mousavi’s statement, Khatami, who was banned from the media and political activity as well as leaving the country years ago, also issued a statement which many saw as his opposition to Mousavi’s proposal and his insistence on preserving the Islamic Republic at any cost.
In his speech, Emam criticized Mousavi’s views and seemed to be siding with Khatami. He claimed that regime change views are promoted by those who want to cause a rift among reformists and the people.
Khatami and Mousavi both believe in non-violence and are against any foreign interference in Iranians’ affairs, he argued.
He added that before these two leaders’ statements, his own party had in an open letter to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned about the dire situation in the country and stressed the necessity of deep reforms and returning to the full implementation of the Constitution before it was too late.
