Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi addresses a Hamas solidarity rally in Tehran. Photo: Reuters/Sobhan Farajvan

i24 News – Tehran vowed to carry out revenge attacks against Israel on Saturday after a missile strike flattened a building used as a base of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, killing five Guards and an unspecified number of Syrian fighters.

Tehran “will not leave the Zionist regime’s crimes unanswered,” said President Ebrahim Raisi.

A multi-story building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s government was completely flattened by “precision-targeted Israeli missiles,” local reports said.

The Guards said an unspecified number of members of the Syrian military were killed, along with the five Iranians, whom it identified without giving their ranks. The security source said one of the slain Iranians ran the elite force’s information unit.

There was no comment from Israel, which has long pursued a bombing campaign against Iran’s military and security presence in Syria but typically does not discuss such attacks publicly.

The strike was a “desperate attempt to spread instability in the region,” said Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani in remarks reported by state media. “Iran…reserves its right to respond to the organized terrorism of the fake Zionist regime at the appropriate time and place.”