Iranians chant ‘Death to Israel’ at huge funeral of commander said killed by Israel
Khamenei leads prayer over body before thousands gather to pay respects to senior Revolutionary Guard official Razi Mousavi, killed in Syria airstrike; Iran vows response
Thousands massed Thursday in the Iranian capital for the funeral of senior Revolutionary Guard commander Razi Mousavi, three days after he was killed in Syria in what Tehran claims was an Israeli strike.
The crowd in Tehran’s central Imam Hossein square chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” while many waved yellow flags with the message “I am your opponent” — a reference to Israel — in both Persian and Hebrew.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei earlier on Thursday met with Mousavi’s family and led a prayer over the slain general’s body before it was taken to the central square.
Israel has long fought a shadow war of assassinations and sabotage against Iran and its allies, but Mousavi’s killing came at a time of sharply heightened regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict since early October.
Some of the mourners in Tehran carried pictures of Mousavi together with Qassem Soleimani, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) foreign operations arm who was killed in a 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad. The IRGC is a US-designated terrorist organization.
Iran next week will mark the fourth anniversary of the death of Soleimani, who had run the IRGC’s Quds Force for more than a decade and directed countless terror attacks abroad.
Mousavi’s body was taken to Iraq for funeral rites in Shiite Muslim holy sites a day ahead of his burial in Iran on Thursday.
Iranian state media says Mousavi, a Quds Force general and the most senior IRGC commander killed since Soleimani, was killed in an Israeli missile strike on Monday near the Syrian capital Damascus.
The IDF, which has launched hundreds of strikes on Iran-linked targets in war-torn Syria in recent years, said only that it does not comment on foreign media reports.
Syria on Thursday said Mousavi’s “martyrdom” on its territory was part of Israel’s “aggressive policies,” official news agency SANA reported.
In letters sent by the Syrian foreign ministry, Damascus called on the United Nations to act against Israeli actions that might “ignite the region,” SANA said.
Tehran vows ‘response’
The head of the Guards, Hossein Salami, hailed Mousavi as “one of the most experienced and effective IRGC commanders in the Axis of Resistance” — Tehran-aligned armed terror groups in the Middle East.
IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif warned on Wednesday that “our response to Mousavi’s assassination will be a combination of direct action as well as [from] others led by the Axis of Resistance.”
Sharif charged that Israel’s killing of the general “was likely due to its failures” when the Iran-backed terror group Hamas launched a massive onslaught on October 7, killing approximately 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapping 240, mostly civilians, amid horrendous acts of brutality.
In response, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas, launching a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza aimed at destroying the group’s military and governance capabilities. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says at least 21,110 people have been killed in the strikes, though those figures cannot be independently verified, and are believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires.
Iran, which supports Hamas both financially and militarily, has hailed the devastating October 7 attacks as a “success” but denied any direct involvement.
“‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ was a completely Palestinian operation,” Salami said, using Hamas’s name for the October 7 attack, a day after remarks by spokesman Sharif seemed to suggest it was in part motivated by revenge for Soleimani’s killing.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
