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A prominent Syrian businessman with close ties to President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Iran-backed militant groups in the region was killed in an Israeli air strike in Syria on Monday, according to people familiar with the situation.
Mohammad Baraa Katerji, 48, was killed when a drone hit his car in Saboura, an area a few kilometres inside Syria near the Lebanese border, said an official with an Iran-backed group, speaking on condition of anonymity as they were not authorised to discuss the matter.
The official gave no further details of the killing, and neither did pro-Damascus news outlets that reported on Katerji’s assassination.
For years, Katerji and his brother Hussam have been prominent members of Assad’s inner circle, and served as front men for illicit business and economic interests that the president’s family controls and has profited from.
Iran is one of Assad’s main backers, and many Tehran-backed militias operate in Syria.
The Katerji brothers — originally from Raqqa, the Syrian city that jihadist group Isis once claimed as its capital — rose to prominence after Syria descended into civil war in 2011, following the Assad regime’s violent crackdown on a popular uprising in the country.
The brothers’ ascendancy was partly due to their acting as middle men in the illicit trading of oil between Damascus and Isis in its heyday, and more recently with Syrian Kurdish forces that control north-east Syria.
They also facilitated weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria, deepening their relationship with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
The Katerji brothers built a sprawling business empire over the past decade, encompassing banking, construction, logistics, transport, and the illicit oil trade.
Along the way, they curried favour with Assad and his powerful wife Asma, partly by funding pro-regime militias and other Iran-backed militant groups.
An Israeli official said in recent years Mohammad Katerji had links to senior officials in Lebanese militant group Hizbollah and Iran’s Quds force, part of the Revolutionary Guards and responsible for the country’s foreign operations.
The official added Katerji had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars to Hizbollah, the Quds force, and other groups.
This included funnelling millions of dollars to Hizbollah since the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas erupted in October, the official said, adding that Katerji’s assassination was meant to prevent others from carrying out similar activities. The official also spoke on condition of anonymity.
The US, UK and EU imposed sanctions on the Katerji brothers and some of their business interests between 2018 and 2020 in response to their illicit oil trading and for providing support to Assad’s regime.
The Israeli military has conducted hundreds of air strikes against Iran-backed groups as part of an increasingly overt confrontation across the Middle East over the past decade.
Israel has repeatedly struck targets in Syria, including Aleppo and Damascus airports, as well as weapons depots and facilities tied to Tehran and its proxies in Syria.
Hizbollah and Israeli forces have been trading near-daily fire since the eruption of the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza on October 7.
While Israel has killed senior members of Hizbollah and other Iran-backed militants since October, Assad’s inner circle and members of his government have so far been off limits.
Israel rarely acknowledges that it carries out operations against Iran or Syria.
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