Luai Beshara/AFP/Getty Images
Emergency workers extinguish a fire at the scene of an airstrike that hit a building next to the Iranian embassy in the Syrian capital Damascus on April 1, 2024.
Washington
CNN
—
The United States told Iran it had no involvement or prior knowledge of Monday’s attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, a U.S. official said.
The contact came amid concerns that the war between Israel and Hamas could escalate into a broader regional conflict. Iran has vowed retaliation after two top commanders and five others were killed at its consulate in Syria in an attack it blamed on Israel.
A spokesperson for the National Security Council said, “The United States was not involved in the airstrike and had no prior knowledge of it.”
The US “communicated this directly to Iran,” the official said.
Axios first reported the US communications to Iran.
The State Department said Monday that the United States is gathering more information about Monday’s attack on Damascus, but expressed concern about further regional conflict.
“I don’t want to go into specifics before we have information about what exactly this was, but of course we are always concerned about anything that could lead to an escalation of conflict or an increase in conflict in the region. ,” the Secretary of State said. Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian insisted that the United States was broadly responsible for the attack, saying, “The United States must take responsibility.” Foreign Minister Amir Abdullahian said that given Switzerland’s role in representing US interests in Iran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry summoned the Swiss chargé d’affaires to Tehran in the early hours of Tuesday local time to discuss the incident.
The United States has accused Iran of supporting proxy attacks against American and Western targets since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. In January, three U.S. soldiers were killed in a drone attack on a U.S. military outpost in Jordan, which the U.S. blamed on the Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance Movement, an umbrella group in Iraq, but the incident shocked the Iranian government. , officials told CNN, raising concerns about the country’s political leadership. This was reported as information from the US intelligence agency.
