As Forecast: Israel Ramps Up War With Iran, Kills Top Commander in Syria, Report Says

The Trends Journal has long noted the Benjamin Netanyahu dreams of the U.S. going to war against Tehran -- and he has the chickenhawks in Congress to do it

Israel wants the U.S. to go to war against Iran, which it has called the head of the snake. (IRNA)

An Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Syria killed Tehran’s top military official in the country and leveled the building in the Israeli government’s latest effort to expand the war in the region to get the U.S. to go to war with Iran.

SANA, the Syrian news agency, reported that Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps official, was killed in the major strike. IRNA, the Iranian outlet, said unconfirmed reports “said at least eight people had been killed in the Israeli airstrikes.”

The Times of Israel said Zahedi “has been reported to be a top commander in IRGC’s Quds Force — responsible for the unit’s operations in Syria and Lebanon, and thus the most senior commander of Iranian forces in Syria and Lebanon.”

George Galloway, the British politician and commentator, posted on X: “It is not only #Iran who will undoubtedly respond to what just happened in Damascus but Russia too cannot continue to allow such savage violations of the sovereignty of its 50 year ally Syria. Keep an eye on the Golan Heights.”

Israel has tied Russia to Iran and MPs there have promised retaliation.

Israel Katz, the Israeli energy minister, has said Israel’s fight in Gaza is part of a “World War III against radical Islam with Russian involvement.”

Earlier this month, Israel carried out another airstrike that killed Reza Zarei, who was in charge of Iranian oil shipment to Syria. Tehran also confirmed that Israel was behind the two attacks on gas pipelines in the country in February in hopes to “disturb gas service” and “put people’s gas distribution at risk.”

TRENDPOST: Israel continues its effort to drag Iran into the war to trigger a response from Washington.

Katz has called Iran the “head of the snake.”

Israel is known to carry out clandestine attacks on Iranian infrastructure it claims can help Tehran obtain a nuclear weapon. Tensions between Israel and Iran have only increased after the Hamas attack last October and subsequent genocide in Gaza. 

Nir Barkat, the Israeli economy minister has called Iran a “legitimate target” and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked earlier this month why Israel carried out strikes against Iranian “proxies” in the region and not Iran itself, and he said that his forces have been striking its top enemy.

“Who says we are not attacking Iran, we are attacking,” he said.

He called Iran the “head of the octopus” and you see its “tentacles all around from the Houthis to Hezbollah to Hamas.”

Ebrahim Raisi, the Iranian president, said Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood operation “will bring about the end of the Zionist regime” and promised to retaliate.

AntiWar reported that the attack on the consulate “comes a few days after Israel launched some of its heaviest airstrikes in Syria that reportedly killed 52 people, including Syrian soldiers and members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.”

Gerald Celente has said that these Islamic countries do not need to fight for Gaza, but rather they can inflict immense pain on the West by enforcing an oil embargo, like the one in 1973, when the Arab world responded to the Yom Kippur war. The embargo sparked a worldwide energy crisis as global oil prices jumped 300 percent by 1974.

The U.S. and other countries were forced to lower speed limits and impose fuel rationing.

Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy noted that Hamas’s attack on 7 October was the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.

We have forecast that Brent Crude can spike to above $150 per barrel if hostilities escalate across the region. That price would tank the equity markets and the global economy.