The US told Iran that it had “no involvement” and was not aware of the attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria on April 1. This was reported by the Axios news platform, citing its source among US officials.
A spokesperson for the US National Security Council told Axios that the US “had nothing to do with the strike, and we had no prior knowledge of it.”
One of the high-ranking US officials told the platform that the US “reported this directly to Iran”.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said seven military advisers, including generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi, and five officers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
General Mohammad Reza Zahedi is the highest-ranking official of the IRGC killed in 2020 after the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani.
Axios notes that Israeli intelligence was tracking Zahedi, who was “responsible for arming and coordinating Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian militias in Lebanon and Syria.” Israeli and US officials said that Israel informed US President Joe Biden’s administration about the strike minutes before its air strike, but did not ask for his permission.
One of the US officials said that the notification by Israel was not detailed and was given when the warplanes were already in the sky.
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