The Department of Defense has assessed that Israel was responsible for Monday’s strike on an Iranian Embassy building in Damascus, Syria.

Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said on Tuesday it was the U.S.’s assessment that Israel carried out the strike and that “there were a handful of top IRGC leaders” at the location at the time of the attack, though she could not say which leaders specifically were there.

The Israelis have not confirmed culpability for the attack. The U.S. reached out to Tehran to confirm to them directly the U.S. wasn’t involved in the strike.

The Israel Defense Forces told CNN the building that was targeted was a “military building of Quds forces” and that it was not a consulate.

“Let me make it clear — we had nothing to do with the strike in Damascus. We weren’t involved in any way whatsoever,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s team struck a more uncertain note during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the attack.

“I want to be clear: We do not yet have confirmation of the status of the building that was struck in Damascus,” Ambassador Robert Wood, the alternate U.S. representative to the U.N., told envoys in New York. “Any confirmed attack on property that was in fact a diplomatic facility would be of concern to the United States. Diplomatic missions and their property, as well as official diplomatic residences, must be protected, even and especially in times of armed conflict.”

The strike put U.S. officials in a difficult diplomatic position, as United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked “the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises and personnel … in accordance with international law” to condemn the attack, while Israeli officials maintained that the bombed building should be perceived as “a military building disguised as a civilian building in Damascus,” rather than a site entitled to diplomatic protections.

“As I noted earlier, we are also concerned by reports that terrorist leaders and elements were allegedly present at this facility and condemn Iran’s continued coordination, training, and arming of terrorists and other violent extremists,” Wood added.

The strike prompted outrage from Tehran and its proxies in the Middle East.

“Netanyahu has lost his mental balance because he has faced back-to-back defeat in Gaza and has not achieved the Zionists’ ambitious goals,” Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said in a statement, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Officials expressed concerns that the strike could lead to a widening of the conflict in the Middle East.

Tehran has a group of proxy forces throughout the Middle East that have carried out attacks against Israel or U.S. interests in the region.

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Iranian-supported militias in Iraq and Syria carried out around 170 rocket and missile attacks targeting U.S. forces in those countries and in Jordan from mid-October to mid-February. These strikes began after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel that left roughly 1,200 people dead, and three U.S. troops were killed in an attack in Jordan at Tower 22, a U.S. outpost. The last attack was on Feb. 4, following a significant and multipronged U.S. response in Iraq and Syria.

U.S. forces at al Tanf garrison in Syria shot down a one-way attack drone nearby on Monday afternoon, a defense official told the Washington Examiner. Singh said the drone “was traveling in the proximity of the base” though they do not believe it was “an attack on U.S. forces.”