Iran: “Killing of Senior Hizbullah and IRGC Officials Will Hasten Israel’s Destruction”
By Lt. Col. (ret.) Michael Segall
web posted January 26, 2015
A Generational Embrace
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei posted on the main page of his
personal site and tweeted on his Twitter account (in Persian, English
and Arabic) rare “unseen” pictures of him hugging and kissing Jihad
Mughniyeh and his father, Imad. These testify to the profound tie
Khamenei maintained with Imad Mughniyeh,
a favorite of his from the start of Mughniyeh’s activity in Lebanon
until his February 2008 assassination in Damascus, and with his son. It
also illustrates the depth of Iran’s involvement in Lebanon including
its special and strategic ties with its “favorite son,” Hizbullah.
The Iranian media and
social networks also highlighted Jihad Mughniyeh’s special tie with the
commander of the Revolutionary Guard Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, who
reportedly was seriously injured in a recent ISIS suicide bombing in
Iraq. The Twitter account that may belong to Soleimani tweeted: “RIP
Jihad Mughniye followed the steps of his father.” Moreover, Brigadier
General Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a senior IRGC official who was killed in
the attack, was very close to Soleimani and also served under his
command, as various publications in the Iranian media have made clear
since his death.
The Iranian news agency Tabnak,
which is associated with former IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei, reported
shortly after the attack that several IRGC members including Allahdadi
were also killed. The report was removed from the site soon after it
was posted. It was also reported that Allahdadi had been in Syria to
advise the regime on the war against the
Salafi-Takfiri [apostate] terrorists.
An extensive background report on Allahdadi’s military career and close ties with Soleimani was posted on the
Mashregh News
site. It related that when the IRGC’s 41st Sarallah Division was
established in the Karaman Province under Soleimani’s command, AllahDadi
joined it and fought alongside him until the end of the Iran-Iraq War
in 1988. After holding a number of other posts in the IRGC, the most
recent of which was commander of the Al Ghadir division in the Yazd
Province (until June 2011), he was invited by Soleimani to join the Quds
Force and fight the “Zionist regime” in Syria and Lebanon. The article
sheds light on the methods of the Quds Force and its commander and on
the veterans of the war in Iraq who are loyal to him and who Solomeini
recruits for the most consequential Iranian security roles in Syria and
Lebanon. AllahDadi’s funeral was held January 21 with the IRGC Commander
attending.
A lone report by a
Fars News journalist in Syria indicates
that a senior IRGC official named Asadi was also killed in the attack,
saying that he was a commander of the IRGC advisers in Syria. The names
of the other IRGC fatalities have not yet been published.
Devastating Thunderbolt
In a special and stern message after the attack, IRGC commander
Mohammad Ali Jafari reaffirmed the organization’s commitment to
continuing the struggle against Israel until its destruction. Jafari
said:
As the recent
rounds of fighting in Lebanon and in Palestine have already
demonstrated, the IRGC will continue to stand firm [beside Hizbullah and
the Palestinian organizations] until the destruction of the Zionist
regime and its removal from the geostrategic equation in the region….
The martyrdom of the members of the Ummah constitutes a further
springboard for the destruction of the oppressive, satanic, and
terrorist political system of the Zionist regime…. The martyrdom again
proved that we must not distance ourselves from the jihad and that the
Zionists must prepare themselves for the “devastating thunderbolt” of
Iran.
The Iranian defense minister, Hussein Dehqan, who has played a
central role in the IRGC’s activity in Syria and Lebanon and also was
involved in the attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut, stated that the
Israeli operation in Syria was a continuation of its “crimes” in
Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon and that “its support for the
radical, heretical (or Takfiri, the Iranian term for the extreme Sunni
organizations operating against the Assad regime) Islamists also
highlights Israel’s shameful nature.”
The Arming of the West Bank
Ali Larijani, chairman of the [legislative] Majlis, sent condolences to Hizbullah and said,
“The
Zionist regime’s role in the terrorist attacks in the region is well
evident, especially in the terrorist operations in Syria and Iraq, and a
global unity is needed to annihilate the [Zionist] regime.” Mohammad
Reza Mohseni-Sanihead of the Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy
Committee said that the “killing of the resistance (Hizbullah)
commanders would not go unanswered” and that in his opinion “the
response would defeat the Zionist regime for the fourth time and bring
about its destruction.” The committee’s spokesman Hussein
Naqavi-Husseini threatened:
Lebanese Hizbullah is
capable of raining an ongoing missile offensive onto the occupied
territories [Israel] and retains the right to respond militarily to the
killing of its people…. Hizbullah has long-range missiles that can hit
military bases [in Israel]…. It is easy for Hizbullah to respond
militarily.
Also addressing the issue of the West Bank and Khamenei’s call to arm
the Palestinians there, Naqavi-Husseini said that Israel’s actions
would not succeed to stop the arming of the West Bank and that the
Palestinians there would undoubtedly be armed for the anti-Israeli
struggle.
The Border Guard of the Islamic World
Hesam al-Din Ashena, head of the Center for Strategic Studies of the
Iranian presidency and adviser to Rouhani for cultural affairs, said
that the events in Syria in recent years are meant to prevent it from
becoming the front line of the battle against Israel and therefore “it
is only natural that Hizbullah, as the border guard of the Islamic
world, will be present at the border of Syria [with Israel] and will
continue to maintain this presence so that the confrontation will
continue.”
The Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the killing of the Hizbullah
and IRGC commanders in Syria, which foreign media attributed to Israel.
Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said, “We condemn all
actions of the Zionist regime as well as all acts of terror.”
Revenge…Not Long in Coming
The conservative Iranian media hastened to draw a connection between
the Israeli operation and “a few Arab regimes,” headed by Saudi Arabia.
An editorial in the newspaper
Kayhan, Khamenei’s mouthpiece,
stated that the “destructive process” in Syria (which had almost led to
Assad’s fall) had played into the hands of Israel and Saudi Arabia until
the Iranian and Hizbullah advisers began to change the equation in
Syria. The paper further wrote that if Hamas and Palestinian Islamic
Jihad had managed to fire rockets at Israel for 51 days, Hizbullah could
similarly fire rockets at Haifa and Tel Aviv whenever it wanted to.
The revenge against Israel, Kayhan
promises, will not be long in coming. On January 21, its lead headline
was “Harsh Revenge, Hizbullah the Nightmare of the Zionists.” A day earlier the paper’s lead headline quoted Nasrallah, who had called on Israel’s residents to get their bomb shelters ready.
Syria: The First Line of Defense against Israel
The killing of the senior Hizbullah and IRGC officials finds Iran in
the midst of debilitating warfare in Syria and Iraq against ISIS and the
other organizations opposing Assad’s regime. Iran and Hizbullah have
been incurring heavy losses, including senior IRGC commanders. One of
these, General Hamid Taghavi, was one of Soleimani’s senior aides and
was killed in Iraq at the end of 2014 while advising the Iraqi army in
its war against ISIS. Recently the death of another senior IRGC official
in the Mosul area was reported.
Syria constitutes a central axis of these two campaigns. At the same
time it is, as attested by the Iranian political and military
leadership, a crucial element in Iran’s overall strategy of struggle and
containment of Israel. Hence in recent years, since the outbreak of the
so-called Arab Spring, Iran has devoted abundant resources of skilled
manpower, advisers, money (despite the drastic decline in oil revenues),
arms shipments and logistics to preserving Assad’s regime.
Iran has injected Lebanese Hizbullah into the campaign in Syria and
Iraq while creating cells of “Hizbullah Syria,” which Hizbullah Lebanon
has been tutoring. The timing of the attack a few days after Nasrallah’s
boastful speech about Hizbullah’s offensive capabilities, with threats
against Israel, puts the organization and its patron in a difficult
dilemma concerning the nature and characteristics of the response, which
could spark an escalation and an expansion of the fronts they have to
deal with despite limited resources.
Not only has Iran intensified its activity in Syria and assumed
control of the operational issues affecting the Assad regime’s survival
in its battle with the opposition organizations, Iran has also gradually
begun to turn the Golan Heights into an active theater of combat with
Israel. Thus the younger Mughniyeh, who was the symbol of his
mythological father and enjoyed open and intimate channels of
communication with Supreme Leader Khamenei, was appointed to the
sensitive task of establishing and activating the terrorist
infrastructure on the Golan.
These groups carried out attacks in the Har Dov area (October 7,
2014) and were preparing for further attacks of new kinds, as Nasrallah
implied in his latest speech — including the conquest of Israeli
settlements and “other surprises” involving missiles and rockets. At the
beginning of next week, Nasrallah is expected to deliver an additional
speech in which he will probably hint at how Hizbullah will respond.
The joint patrol of Hizbullah and IRGC officials that was struck may
have been part of Hizbullah’s preparations, under Iranian tutelage, to
intensify attacks against Israel along the Golan border using improvised
explosive devices (IED), antitank weapons, and other means of
asymmetrical warfare, with the aim of forcing Israel to expand its
activity in Syria. Hezbollah’s
Al-Manar television station confirmed that the fighters were killed in Quneitra “during a field reconnaissance mission.”
Difficult Decisions
The decision on the timing, location, and nature of the possible
response to the killing of the IRGC and Hizbullah officials will be made
in Tehran according to its strategic interests beyond the
Syrian-Lebanese theater. The new midyear target date for reaching a
nuclear agreement with the West, increasingly a subject of controversy
within Iran, could figure in Iran’s considerations regarding Hizbullah’s
response. Iran is now in domestic distress because of the drastic
decline in oil prices, making it difficult to continue its assistance to
Hizbullah and the Palestinian organizations. Although no significant
decline in this assistance is evident, and recently there were even
reports of improved relations with Hamas, the issue of sustaining the
assistance continues to foment within a difficult internal dispute
between the IRGC on one side and Rouhani and his government on the
other.
In any case, the last word on the nature and timing of the response
is reserved for Khamenei, who holds a special place in his heart for his
favorite Imad Mughniyeh, whose death has not yet been avenged. Now he
is joined by his son. Soleimani’s longstanding ties with Allahdadi
could also be a factor leading to “personal” and painful revenge. For
Iran and Hizbullah the series of assassinations that have not been
avenged (Imad Mughniyeh in 2008, Hassan al-Laqis in 2013), which have
damaged Hizbullah’s prestige, tip the scales toward those who favor a
painful and imminent response. This could lead the IRGC, which sets the
tone in Iran, to decide to allow Hizbullah to respond in an irregular
fashion that carries the risk of an escalation.
IDF Lt.-Col. (ret.) Michael (Mickey) Segall, an expert on
strategic issues with a focus on Iran, terrorism, and the Middle East,
is a senior analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and at
Foresight Prudence.