Omar Sanadiki/AP
Emergency companies work at a constructing destroyed by an airstrike in Damascus, Syria, Monday, April 1, 2024. Israeli airstrikes destroyed the consulate of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing and wounding everybody inside, Syrian state media reported on Monday.
WASHINGTON CNN —
The United States is on excessive alert as Iran targets Israeli and American belongings within the area as early as subsequent week in response to an Israeli army assault in Damascus that killed high Iranian army commanders on Monday. The United States is actively getting ready for a “important” assault that could possibly be carried out towards the United States. A senior administration official instructed CNN.
U.S. officers now consider an Iranian assault is “inevitable,” a view echoed by Israel, the official mentioned. Both governments anticipate that an Iranian assault might unfold in quite a lot of methods, placing each U.S. and Israeli belongings and personnel liable to being focused. We are working laborious to enhance our readiness.
A future assault on Iran was a significant subject of debate throughout Thursday’s telephone name between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
As of Friday, the 2 governments didn’t know when or how Iran deliberate to strike again, the official mentioned.
A direct assault on Israel by Iran is without doubt one of the worst-case situations the Biden administration is getting ready for, guaranteeing a speedy escalation of the already chaotic scenario within the Middle East. Such an assault might escalate the struggle between Israel and Hamas right into a broader regional battle, one thing Biden has lengthy sought to keep away from.
Iran has vowed to retaliate after Israel launched an airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Syria, killing at the very least seven officers. Iran’s Foreign Ministry mentioned these killed included Mohamed Reza Zahedi, the commander-in-chief of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and his senior commander Mohamed Hadi Haji Rahimi. ing.
Iranian state tv reported on Tuesday that at the very least six Syrian nationals had been additionally killed.
Zahedi, a former commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Ground Forces, Air Force, and its deputy commander for operations, is probably the most senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard since then-President Donald Trump ordered the assassination of Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. It grew to become a high-profile Iranian goal. 2020.
The United States shortly instructed Iran that the Biden administration was not concerned and had no prior data of Monday’s assault on the embassy, and warned Iran to not goal American belongings.
“The United States was not concerned within the airstrike and had no prior data of it,” a National Security Council spokesperson instructed CNN earlier this week.
The United States considers that not solely its personal embassies and consulates overseas have particular standing, but in addition overseas embassies and consulates within the United States. According to the U.S. State Department, “an assault on an embassy is taken into account an assault on the nation it represents.”
On Tuesday, Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh mentioned the US evaluation was that Israel carried out the airstrike.
“That is our evaluation, and it is usually our evaluation that there have been a small variety of IRGC high leaders there. We can’t affirm their identities, however that’s our preliminary evaluation presently. “,” Singh mentioned.
Israel has stepped up army operations towards Iran and its regional proxies after the Tehran-backed Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 individuals and taking greater than 200 hostages. There is.
Israel’s subsequent struggle in Gaza left greater than 32,800 individuals useless within the besieged enclave, induced widespread destruction and pushed greater than 1 million individuals to the brink of synthetic hunger, in response to the Health Ministry. .
This article has been up to date with further reporting.
CNN’s Helen Regan, Hamdi Alkhshari and Tamara Kiblawi contributed to this report.