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Israeli military strikes Iranian targets inside Syria Israeli military strikes Iranian targets inside Syria
(about 3 hours later)
Israel has struck several targets in Syria as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran’s presence in the country, shaking the night sky over Damascus with an hour of loud explosions in a second consecutive night of military action. A second night of Israeli airstrikes have hit targets inside Syria in a tit-for-tat exchange that included the launch of a medium-range missile from the outskirts of Damascus towards the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Damascus did not say what damage or casualties resulted from the strikes, but a war monitor said 11 people were killed, while Syria’s ally Russia said four Syrian soldiers died. The sharp increase in tensions between Israel and Syria, and its key backer, Iran, comes at a time when the security situation in Syria is rapidly changing owing to the recently announced US troop drawdown and a jockeying for influence on all sides.
The threat of direct confrontation between Israel and Iran has long simmered in Syria, where the Iranian military built a presence early in the civil war to help Bashar al-Assad fight Sunni Muslim rebels seeking to oust him. After loud explosions were heard again early on Monday morning, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 people were killed– including Iranians – while Syria’s ally Russia said four Syrian soldiers died.
Israel, regarding Iran as most dangerous enemy, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, without claiming responsibility for the attacks. Video posted on social media caught the surreal moment when skiers descending Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights saw an Israeli anti-missile battery intercept a missile.
But with an election approaching, and with the US vowing more action on Iran, Israel’s government has lifted the lid on strikes that it would previously have preferred to keep quiet, and has also taken a tougher stance towards Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon.
It blamed Iran for a rocket attack on Sunday.
America is retreating from world affairs and circling the wagons…
In Tehran, the air force chief, Brig Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh, said Iran was “fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth”, according to the Young Journalists Club, a website supervised by Iranian state television.
Assad has said Iranian forces are welcome to stay in Syria after years of military victories brought most of the country back under his control, though two large enclaves are still held by other forces.
His other main ally, Russia, worried about the consequences of Israeli strikes on the wider pursuit of a war that is entering its ninth year, has provided Syria with air defence systems.
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is hoping to win a fifth term in elections on 9 April, last week told his cabinet Israel had carried out “hundreds” of attacks over recent years to curtail Iran and Hezbollah.
“We have a permanent policy, to strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria and hurt whoever tries to hurt us,” he said on Sunday.
In a highly publicised operation last month, the Israeli military uncovered and destroyed cross-border tunnels from Lebanon that it said were dug by Hezbollah to launch attacks during any future war between them.
The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has vowed to expel “every last Iranian boot” from Syria and a senior US official in Lebanon last week criticised Hezbollah over the tunnels.
Israel last fought a war with Hezbollah, on Lebanese soil, in 2006. It fears Hezbollah has used its role fighting alongside Iran and Assad in Syria to bolster its military capabilities, including developing an arsenal of rockets aimed at Israel.
Tensions have also risen with Israel’s construction of a frontier barrier that Lebanon says passes through its territory along the contested border.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked Iranian targets early on Monday, including munitions stores, a position in the Damascus International airport, an intelligence site and a military training camp.
Its jets targeted Syrian defence batteries after coming under fire, the Israeli military said. Russia said four Syrian soldiers were killed and six wounded. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said 11 people had been killed.
Russian-supplied Syrian air defences had destroyed more than 30 cruise missiles and guided bombs, Russia’s defence ministry said, according to the RIA news agency.
Syrian state media, citing a military source, said the country had endured an intense attack through consecutive waves of guided missiles but had destroyed most “hostile targets”.Syrian state media, citing a military source, said the country had endured an intense attack through consecutive waves of guided missiles but had destroyed most “hostile targets”.
Israel’s target was the Iranian Quds Force, a special unit in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps overseas operations, the Israeli military said. Although the threat of direct confrontation between Israel and Iran has long simmered in Syria – where the Iranian military built a presence early in the civil war to help Bashar al-Assad – the most recent flare-up has come at a potentially dangerous moment.
It followed a previous night of cross-border fire, which Israel said began when Iranian troops fired an Iranian-made surface-to-surface missile from an area near Damascus at a packed ski resort in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. On the Israeli side the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long directed bellicose rhetoric towards Iran, is facing the threat of indictment – perhaps as early as February – over corruption allegations, as well as elections in April.
Iran has yet to respond to the accusation. Israel has acknowledged a far more overt role in the war in Syria in recent weeks after years in which it has conducted thousands of largely unacknowledged raids.
The Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said the area it was fired from was “an area we were promised the Iranians would not be present in”, in an apparent allusion to Russian reassurances to Israel. This month the outgoing Israeli military chief of staff, Gadi Eisenkot, claimed Israel had carried out thousands of strikes against Iranian interests in Syria. These comments were followed by Netanyahu’s public disclosure two weeks ago of a strike near Damascus – a sharp departure from Israel’s policy of ambiguity.
Syria said it was Israel that had attacked and its own air defences that had repelled the assault. Iran, meanwhile, has been moving to consolidate its presence in Syria even as the civil war has swung ever more decisively in the direction of Assad’s regime, not least as recent moves by the Trump administration are perceived as leaving a vacuum.
Continuing that trend, on Monday an Israeli military spokesman said the targets hit included a facility belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ al-Quds force, and the most recent strikes were in response to the launch of the surface-to-surface missile fired by al-Quds from Syria on Sunday.
“We saw that as an unacceptable attack by the Iranian troops – not proxies, not Shia militias, not Syrian forces – Iranian troops firing an Iranian-made missile from the vicinity of Damascus towards sovereign Israel,” said the military spokesman, Jonathan Conricus.
Israel said targets included munitions stores, a site at Damascus international airport that was allegedly al-Quds’ main logistics hub in the country, an Iranian intelligence installation and an Iranian military training camp.
Netanyahu said on Sunday: “We have a permanent policy: to strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria and hurt whoever tries to hurt us.”
America is retreating from world affairs and circling the wagons…
While some have suggested that the uptick in strikes has been designed to burnish Netanyahu’s security credentials before the elections due on 9 April, others say it carries a strategic military purpose as well.
“If you want to make clear to the other side that you are determined to prevent something, either you escalate the operation – more targets, more sophisticated – or you say in public ‘I am doing it’, meaning ‘I am ready to take the risk’,” said the former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror. “Israel, instead of escalating, decided to make it public.”
However, Avi Issacharoff, an analyst, said in a column for the Times of Israel: “The Syrian rocket fire is probably better understood as an Iranian attempt to create a new balance of power on the Israeli-Syrian front, to generate the expectation that an Israeli attack in Syrian territory will result in fire on Israeli territory. In other words, it was a new effort to create deterrence against Israel.”
In a sign of the increasingly war-like rhetoric of recent days, Tehran’s air force chief, Brig Gen Aziz Nasirzadeh, said Iran was “fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth”, according to the Young Journalists Club, a website supervised by Iranian state television.
Reuters contributed to this report
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