BBC News reports:

Iran’s president said an air strike on the Syrian capital that killed five senior members of Iran’s security forces will not “go unanswered”.

Ebrahim Raisi said Israel was to blame for the attack, which also killed a number of Syrian forces.

Israel has not commented. For years it has carried out strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria.

Such strikes have intensified since the Israel-Gaza war began following Hamas’s 7 October attacks on Israel.

In a statement posted on the president’s officials website, Mr Raisi expressed his condolences to the families of the “high-ranking martyrs”.

He vowed to avenge their deaths, and described the attack as a “cowardly assassination of five of Iran’s most distinguished advisors”.

The statement described the strike as “terrorist and criminal” and said it “shows the height of [Israel’s] desperation and weakness against the combatants of the resistance front”.

“It will not remain unanswered,” said the statement. [Continue reading…]

Reuters reports:

Commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group are on the ground in Yemen helping to direct and oversee Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping, four regional and two Iranian sources told Reuters.

Iran – which has armed, trained and funded the Houthis – stepped up its weapons supplies to the militia in the wake of the war in Gaza, which erupted after Iranian-backed militants Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, the four regional sources said.

Tehran has provided advanced drones, anti-ship cruise missiles, precision-strike ballistic missiles and medium-range missiles to the Houthis, who started targeting commercial vessels in November in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, the sources said.

IRGC commanders and advisers are also providing know-how, data and intelligence support to determine which of the dozens of vessels travelling through the Red Sea each day are destined for Israel and constitute Houthi targets, all the sources said. [Continue reading…]