Iran calls for UN Security Council meeting after Israeli airstrike destroys Iranian consulate in Syria

Iran has asked the U.N. Security Council to hold an emergency meeting to discuss an Israeli airstrike that destroyed Iran’s consulate in Syria’s capital.

The strike Monday killed at least seven people, including senior military advisers, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said.

In a letter Monday, Iranian Ambassador to the U.N. Zahra Ershadi called on the Security Council to discuss “this egregious violation” and prevent future acts that would endanger diplomatic missions.

“Considering the far-reaching international implications of such a reprehensible act which can exacerbate tensions in the region and potentially ignite more conflict involving other nations, Iran urges the Security Council to condemn this unjustified criminal act and terrorist act perpetrated by the Israel regime in the strongest terms possible,” Ershadi wrote.

Israel declined to comment on the attack.

Iranian Ambassador Hossein Akbari condemned Israel for the strike.

Akbari vowed revenge “at the same magnitude and harshness.”

Israel has carried out several hundred strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years. But the number has escalated since the beginning of the nearly six-month Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza and periodic clashes between Israel’s military and Hezbollah fighters along the Lebanon-Israel border.

An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi. A similar strike on a building in Damascus in January killed at least five Iranian advisers. Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.

Some material in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.