Concerns regarding a potential Iranian attack on Israel reached their peak on Thursday, the eve of the last Friday of Ramadan, which Tehran has designated as Quds Day in solidarity with Palestinians.
Late Thursday, Axios reported that Israel has gathered intelligence that shows Iran could attack Israel from its soil using long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles or drones”. Axios also cited an Israeli source about a phone call between Israeli and American defense ministers.
In his cabinet meeting Thursday, Netanyahu warned Iran that Israel would “harm” anyone who wants to harm it. "For years, Iran has been acting against us both directly and via its proxies,” he said, “Israel is acting against Iran and its proxies, defensively and offensively."
The term ‘Quds Day’ was first coined in Iran immediately after the 1979 Revolution. It gained significance after Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of that revolution –and the founder of Iran’s Islamic Republic– called on Muslims everywhere to mark the day by pro-Palestinian rallies and protests against Israel.
Quds Day and the fasting month of Ramadan has often seen a heightened tension in Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, but this year the stakes are much higher because of October 7th and the ensuing Israeli onslaught on Gaza, which has drawn the world’s attention to the decades-long tragedy like never before.
“This year’s Quds Day will be a global uproar against the usurping Zionist regime,” Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei said this week. “In previous years, Quds Day [rallies] were held only in Islamic countries. But this year, it’s highly likely that Quds Day [rallies] are organized in non-Islamic countries as well, with glory, God willing.”
Israeli officials had raised concerns about potential attacks by Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah before Ramadan began. Defense minister Yoav Gallant had predicted attempts to turn the holy Muslim month into the “second phase” of what happened on October 7th and "inflame the region."
Four days to the end of Ramadan, the “second phase” Gallant warned about seems to have not materialized. But the fear of a Middle East in “flames” is still very much alive, even more so since April 1 when Israel killed seven members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, including two high-ranking commanders, in an unprecedented airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus.
Most Iranian officials immediately threatened to retaliate. There were also some inside Iran who called for a “measured response” to avoid escalation. Khamenei spoke of “punishment” for Israel. “We will make them regret this crime and other ones like it,” he said one day after the airstrike on Iran’s consulate.
Shortly after, reports began circulating in Israeli media about the possibility of retaliatory attack by Iran or its proxies, raising fears among the public and putting the Israeli army on high alert.
US officials said they had not picked up intelligence suggesting Iran-backed groups were looking to target US troops following Monday's attack.
Nonetheless some experts and insiders –such as Amos Yadlin, a former Israeli intelligence chief– warned that Iran might choose Quds Day (Friday 5 April) to respond to the strike on its consulate in Syria, either directly or through a proxy.
Until now, Iran has somehow avoided direct confrontations with Israel and the US. But on Thursday, Reuters quoted a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, that many fear “Iran would make good on its threats to retaliate, raising the risk of volatile, regional escalation.”
But many experts believe that Tehran is not as interested, as it shows it is, in a full-blown war with Israel –and potentially the US– not least because a costly war could further destabilize the country and mark the beginning of the end of the Islamic Republic.
Iran International has been flooded with messages from viewers critical of the Iranian government. These messages highlight a perceived discrepancy between the government's harsh treatment of its own citizens and its apparent inefficacy in dealing with external threats.
In a late-night attack on Wednesday, the Sunni militant group Jaish ul-Adl targeted at least five military posts and Revolutionary Guard bases in the cities of Chabahar and Rask. Clashes continued throughout the night, with the government announcing the neutralization of all attackers by Friday noon. At least 28 individuals were killed in the clashes, including 18 militants and 10 Iranian military personnel. Full casualty figures for the injured are unavailable, but reports indicate at least 15 Guards were wounded from a single unit. Jaish ul-Adl has a well-documented history of targeting Iranian forces, particularly the Revolutionary Guards, in areas bordering Pakistan. Designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US in 2010, the group has also been implicated in civilian casualties from past bombings.
The attack comes just a few days after an Israeli airstrike on Iran's consulate in Damascus, Syria, which killed seven Revolutionary Guards, including a high-ranking general. Since the outbreak of the Gaza War in October, suspected Israeli strikes have eliminated at least 18 IRGC commanders and advisors. In response, Iran has issued repeated threats of "harsh revenge," with pronouncements from regime officials, including the Supreme Leader himself.
A recurring theme in the messages sent to Iran International was that the attacks in Sistan-Baluchestan and Syria prove that the Islamic Republic is unable to respond to or prevent the attacks abroad and at home. “The Islamic Republic's real strength is in suppressing its own people," one of person said. “The government is able to quickly identify and punish any Iranian who expresses the slightest opposition to the regime.”
In response to the attacks in Syria and Sistan-Baluchistan Province, the Islamic Republic has resorted to threatening Israel with revenge. However, according to an audio file, this is merely a display of strength, as the Islamic Republic lacks the capability to defeat Israel.
Another Iranian highlighted that the Tehran's claims of its military power are a "sham" as it has not been able to defeat Jaish ul-Adl, a small guerrilla group that repeatedly carry out attacks in Iran. “They can't even handle Jaish ul-Adl, a guerrilla group, and yet they claim they can defeat Israel with all its equipment and intelligence superiority."
In January, IRGC targeted what it claimed were hideouts of the Sunni militants in Pakistan's Baluchistan with missiles. Islamabad retaliated with heavy fire a day later, marking the first attack by a foreign country inside Iranian soil since the end of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). Iranians slammed the government for not responding to Pakistan’s airstrikes.
Frequent criticism of the Islamic Republic is that it maintains power solely through the repression of its own citizens. Its strength is only in "killing its own people," said an Iranian in an audio file sent to Iran International.
The Islamic Republic's intelligence capabilities are only good for "identifying opponents of compulsory hijab, harassing and imprisoning them, killing young protesters and silencing trade union activists."
All in all, these comments suggest a widespread skepticism about the Islamic Republic's claims about its military and intelligence capabilities. Instead, Iranians perceive the regime's true strength to lie in its ability to suppress dissent.
According to the report, all of the slain IRGC forces were targeted in Syria, with 16 in Damascus, one in Deir ez-Zor and one in Baniyas.
Since the Gaza war broke out, Iran’s proxies have attacked Israel from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, and attacked US targets in the region as punishment for the US backing of Israel’s right to defend itself in the wake of October 7. In the most deadly day for Jews since the holocaust, over 1,200 mostly civilians were murdered and over 250 taken hostage.
Israel’s Monday attacks against Iran's consulate building in Damascus have been the deadliest since the inception of the ongoing conflict in the region, killing seven IRGC forces, including two top commanders.
The most prominent figure killed in the recent attacks was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the highest-ranking commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force (IRGC-QF) in Lebanon and Syria. Qods Force is the IRGC’s overseas branch coordinating proxy activities.
Zahedi, 63, joined the basij militias as a teenager and became involved in suppressing protesters. He was a mid-level commander during the Iran-Iraq war and was known by the pseudonym Ali Zahedi. In the mid-2000s, he went to Lebanon where he quickly established a strong network within Hezbollah, to the point he became “the only non-Lebanese member of the group’s council,” Amwaj Media reported.
Zahedi was appointed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the commander of the IRGC ground forces in 2006. He was later transferred to the IRGC Qods Force. According to his son, Zahedi had not returned to Iran since the start of the Gaza war, sparked by Iran-backed Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and only recently spent a few days in the country on the occasion of Nowruz, Iranian New Year.
The second most important person killed in Israel’s Monday strike was Zahedi’s deputy Mohammadhadi Haji Rahimi. Iranian media have called him the deputy coordinator of the IRGC Qods Force. According to reports, he had been a member of the Quds Force since it was formed and was one of its first commanders. Like Zahedi, Haji Rahimi was also a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war and participated in other regional wars in which Iran was involved in some way.
Hossein Amanollahi, Mehdi Jalalati, Mohsen Sedaghat, Ali Agha-Babaei, and Ali Salehi Rouzbahani were the other five members of the IRGC Quds Force who lost their lives in Israel’s Monday strikes.
In the past few months, two other high-ranking IRGC commanders were killed in suspected Israeli attacks in Syria: Razi Moussavi and Hojjatollah Omidvar.
Razi Mousavi (aka Seyyed Razi) was targeted by a direct airstrike on December 25. He headed IRGC’s ‘logistics’ and military coordination in Syria, getting weapons for and coordinating Iran-backed forces in Syria and Lebanon.
On January 20, a building in Damascus’s Mazzeh neighborhood was struck in an attack which claimed the life of Hojjatollah Omidvar (also known as Hajj Sadegh), a senior IRGC commander. He served as the deputy intelligence chief of Qods Force in Syria. Four other IRGC officers were also killed in the strike: Ali Aghazadeh, Saeed Karimi, Mohammad Amin Samadi and Hossein Mohammadi.
Among other IRGC victims of the alleged Israeli attacks are Behrouz Vahedi (targeted in Deir ez-Zor, March 26), Reza Zarei (targeted in Baniyas, March 1), Saeed Alidadi (targeted in south of Damascus, February 2), and Mohammadali Ataei Shourcheh and Panah Taghizadeh (both targeted in Damascus, December 2). The Iranian media have described them as “military advisers.”