Iran's supreme leader attends memorial to commander killed in Syria

Thousands of government supporters on Thursday flocked to the memorial service for senior Iranian commander Seyed Razi Mousavi, who Tehran says was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was among the many high-ranking politicians and officers attending the burial service at a Shiite shrine in Tehran, according to Iranian state media.

Mousavi, from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was killed on Monday in a suspected Israeli airstrike on a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus.

The leadership in Tehran has vowed to avenge his death.

IRGC commander-in-chief Hossein Salami repeated old threats against Israel during a speech at the service.

"Our revenge is always bitter. But a revenge equivalent to the martyrdom of Seyed Razi is nothing less than erasing this Zionist regime from the pages of history," the IRNA news agency quoted the Salami as saying.

Iran's leadership has repeatedly threatened to destroy Israel, its declared arch-enemy since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

According to the New York Times, Mousavi is said to have helped monitor weapons deliveries to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, which is backed by Iran and has repeatedly launched attacks on northern Israel in support of Hamas since the beginning of the Gaza war.

Israel frequently attacks locations in war-torn Syria to prevent Iran from further expanding its military influence in the region via local militias.

Mousavi was a confidant of the powerful IRGC General Qasem Soleimani, who was killed by the US in a drone attack in Iraq in 2020.

Mousavi had decades of military experience in Syria and Lebanon. Although little was previously known about the general, he was considered one of the most influential officers of the Revolutionary Guard abroad.

Iran, alongside Russia, is the most important ally of Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. Tehran considers Syria to be part of the so-called "axis of resistance" in its fight against Israel, alongside Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

According to Tehran, however, Iranian military personnel are not directly involved in the Syrian civil war and act only as advisers.