Even before this week’s strike on its embassy in Damascus, Iran’s losses were mounting.

Beginning in late December, Israel began targeting IRGC and Hezbollah personnel in Syria to increasingly dramatic effect. Next door, the US selectively picked off top commanders from the confederation of Quds-allied militias that comprise the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. The most well-known of those militias is Kataib Hezbollah, the group founded by Mahdi al-Muhandis, who was killed on January 3, 2020, when the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani in history’s most famous drone strike.

All told, the IRGC, Hezbollah, the IRI and Hamas’s leadership outside of Gaza suffered more than half a dozen high-profile casualties over just two months, including, but not limited to, arms trafficker Seyed Razi Mousavi; Hamas’s de facto envoy to Hezbollah Saleh al-Arouri, Al-Nujaba commander Mushtaq Taleb al-Saidi; Quds operative Sadegh Omidzade and Abu Bakr Al-Saadi, a Kataib Hezbollah underboss with links to an attack on a remote American base in Jordan that killed three US service members in January.

This week, Israel turned the dial up. On Monday, IDF warplanes partially destroyed Iran’s diplomatic facility in the Syrian capital, a brazen strike which underscored the perception that the US and Israel believe Tehran has few, if any, viable options for direct retaliation.

Israeli officials who spoke to the Western media (anonymously) claimed the complex, which includes a now razed consulate, didn’t have diplomatic status. That’s a lie, frankly. Or it sure seems like one.

Although Israel’s absolutely correct to assert (implicitly, through unnamed officials) that any outpost of the Iranian government in Syria is a de facto IRGC military base, you can’t target diplomatic facilities. Simply put: You can’t bomb a goddamn consulate. If you do, you’re a terrorist.

With that important caveat, let’s not be obtuse. Iranian outposts in Syria are Quds-run intelligence and logistics hubs. Period. And in Israel’s defense, Quds-run intelligence and logistics hubs constitute legitimate targets in the current geopolitical context. And arguably in any geopolitical context. Hosting Quds commanders in your city and feigning surprise when Israel blows them up “illegally” is like letting the Bonannos have lunch in the back of your deli and acting indignant when the FBI “illegally” wiretaps your pork shop.

Iran’s losses on Monday weren’t trivial. At least seven officials were incinerated, most of whom were IRGC personnel and/or Quds commanders of some rank including Mohamad Reza Zahedi. He’s a somebody. Or he was a somebody. Now he’s strategizing with Soleimani and al-Muhandis from that glorious war room in the sky.

Zahedi’s resume is quite long. He was twice appointed by Soleimani to run the Quds’ operations in Lebanon, a role which included heavy involvement in the joint Iran-Hezbollah-Russia effort to restore the Assad regime during Syria’s decade-long civil war.

That’s hardly the end of it. Zahedi wasn’t some obscure facilitator nobody’s ever heard of outside of Mossad and a few IRGC specialists at Langley. He was a uniformed officer of the Iranian military, and counts as the highest-ranking Iranian official killed since a reality TV show host closed Soleimani’s curtain. Insult to injury for the Quds: Zahedi’s deputy was in the building too.

From a strategic perspective, Israel’s trying to completely incapacitate the weapons trade that supplies Hezbollah by eliminating key figures in Syria. Mousavi was one such figure. Now, apparently, that effort entails the out-in-the-open bombing of consular facilities.

Do note: Everyone (and I do mean everyone) killed by Israel and the US as part of what’s now a three-month assassination campaign was part of the machine Soleimani built. As one professor put it, in remarks to The Guardian this week, “The IRGC is still reliant on one man and his networks. It cannot function independently of them.”

Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister, said Netanyahu’s gone crazy. “He’s lost his mental balance,” Abdollahian chided, on Monday.

Fast forward to Tuesday, and the big man himself weighed in. “We will make them regret their crime,” Khamenei said, in remarks carried by state media. Israel, he pledged, “will be punished.”

As ever, there isn’t anything Iran can do directly without chancing a head-to-head confrontation with the US military, something Khamenei, for all his bombast, has no appetite for. And Iran’s capacity to strike via its proxies is diminished with each assassination, and those assassinations apparently know no bounds.

Forgive me (and I don’t know exactly who I’m apologizing to in this instance), but Esmail Qaani’s a dead man walking. His days are numbered. And in my view, it’s just a matter of time before Israel goes after Hassan Nasrallah.

The strike on Iran’s offices in Damascus apparently disrupted a meeting between Quds officers and representatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Late last week, Israel killed three dozen of Assad’s troops and seven Hezbollah fighters operating near Aleppo.