On the evening of June 26 explosions were reported near an important shrine south of Damascus. Set Zaynab is around ten kilometers southwest of Damascus city center and around a half hour drive. Reports in Syria said air defense systems were active on Wednesday night attempting to confront airstrikes, according to Syrian state media. Photos online showed smoke rising from buildings near the Shi’ite shrine that has the same Set Zaynab name as the town around it.
The important mosque is also called Sayyida Zaynab and is a pilgrimage site for Shi’ites. It is named for the grave of Zaynab, the daughter of Ali and Fatima, a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad. The area has been renovated due to support from Iran and Shi’ites, such that the mosque complex is now quite large and has a golden dome.
As of Thursday it was not clear what actually happened on Wednesday evening. “At around 23:40 PM local time on Wednesday, the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression from the Golan Heights towards a number of sites in the southern region and our air defences intercepted the enemy’s missiles,” a Syrian source told local media. Subsequent reports did not elaborate much on who was killed or what the target was of the alleged airstrike in Set Zaynab.
The area of this mosque south of Damascus is known to be a hotbed of activity for Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias as well as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It’s important to understand some of the context here. Back in April an Israeli airstrike on a building next to the Iranian consulate in Damascus led to Iran launching more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13 and April 14.
Iranian fronts
After the April tensions it appears that there was a reduction in tensions in Syria. Israel has carried out a Campaign Between the Wars against Iranian entrenchment in Syria. This campaign has usually taken the form of targeting arms smuggling to Hezbollah. Not all the details are known but over the years foreign reports indicated Israel carried out thousands of airstrikes in Syria.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 Iran has continued to threaten Israel via Syria. Iran has operationalized multiple fronts against Israel. These include Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well the Houthis in Yemen, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This week the Houthis claimed to target a ship linked to Israel and a militia in Iraq targeted Eilat. This is the wider context of the incident south of Damascus.
What is important to know about the Zaynab shrine is that it has been targeted in the past by other groups. It has served as a center of pro-Iranian activity since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. For instance a large number of militias and the IRGC gathered at the shrine to “defend” it early in the war. This set the pretext for deeper Iranian intervention and Hezbollah intervention in Syria in 2012. With the Syrian rebels largely defeated in southern Syria in 2018, the shrine remained a center for pro-Iranian groups.
In July 2023 a motorcycle rigged with explosives was used in a terror attack against Shi’ites near the shrine. This came on the eve of Ashoura, a Shi’ite holy day. The attack was likely carried out by ISIS.
In December 2023 Razi Mousavi, an IRGC commander, was killed in an airstrike near the Zaynab shrine. Iran’s state media IRNA said he was “killed during an attack by the Zionist regime.” In January 2024 an airstrike hit an IRGC base in the same town as the shrine, Iran International reported. The shrine is therefore an important center of pro-Iran activity and will continue to be in the future. It should be seen as a key node In the Iranian axis in the region.
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