IRAN’S foreign minister accused the United States on Monday of giving Israel the green light for a strike on its consulate building in Syria that killed seven Iranian military officials, including two generals.

Hossein Amirabdollahian repeated Tehran’s vow that it will respond to the Israeli attack, which appeared to signify an escalation of Israel’s targeting of military officials from Iran.

In an address on Monday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his organisation supports a military response to the attack that killed General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior military official in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Force.

Since the war in Gaza began six months ago, clashes have increased between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. 

Though Israel has regularly conducted strikes targeting Iranian military officials and allies, General Zahedi’s death was the most significant attack on Iran since a United States drone targeted and killed Quds Force chief General Qassim Soleimani in 2020 in Baghdad.

Mr Amirabdollahian told reporters during a visit to the Syrian capital: “I’d like to say with a very loud voice from here in Damascus that [the US] has a responsibility in what happened and must be held responsible.”

Mr Amirabdollahian met President Bashar Assad, with whom he discussed Gaza and the wider situation in the region, a statement from Mr Assad’s office said.

The Iranian foreign minister said Washington and two European countries had failed to condemn the attack on the diplomatic building.

He said that failure to condemn the attack “indicates that Washington had given the green light to Israel to commit this crime.”

The Biden administration has insisted that it had no advance knowledge of the air strike. 

But Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said last week that the US has assessed Israel was responsible.

Israel, which rarely acknowledges hits against Iranian targets, said it had no comment on the strike in the Syrian capital.