Iran has called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the Israeli air strike that destroyed the Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said Monday’s attack killed at least seven people, including a senior military adviser.
In a letter on Monday, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Zahra Elshadi, called on the Security Council to discuss “this egregious violation” and prevent future acts that endanger diplomatic missions.
“Considering that such reprehensible acts have far-reaching international repercussions that may increase tensions in the region and may spark more conflicts involving other countries, Iran urges the Security Council to condemn such acts committed by the Israeli regime in the Middle East An unjustifiable criminal act and an act of terror. The harshest terms possible,” El-Shadi wrote.
Israel declined to comment on the attack.
Iranian Ambassador Hussein Akbari condemned the Israeli attack.
Akbari vowed to retaliate “with the same scale and severity.”
In recent years, Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on targets in areas controlled by the Syrian government. But the numbers have risen since the start of Israel’s nearly six-month war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip and sporadic clashes between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants along Lebanon’s border with Israel.
In December, an Israeli airstrike near Damascus killed Seyed Razi Mousavi, a long-time adviser to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guards in Syria. In January, a similar attack on a building in Damascus killed at least five Iranian advisers. Last week, an airstrike in Syria’s strategic eastern province of Deir ez-Zor near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.
This report contains information from The Associated Press and Reuters.
