Eurasia Press & News
An Israeli military spokesman said the strikes were meant to convey a “clear message” to the Syrian regime and its Iranian backers.
Israeli warplanes struck Iran-tied targets in Syria overnight, killing ten military officers and militiamen after troops uncovered roadside bombs along the border in the Golan Heights, the Israeli military said Wednesday.
Analysts believe the strikes reflected Israel’s determination to carry on with its fight against Iranian intervention in the region despite the possible policy shifts that might occur after the new administration of US President Joe Biden comes to office.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a non-governmental war watchdog, the Israeli fighter jets struck “the regime-affiliated “air defence” centre and other positions and weapon depots of Iranian-backed militias and the Lebanese Hezbollah in Damascus international airport, its perimeter, Sayeda Zeinab area, Al-Keswa and other positions in the south and south-west of the capital, Damascus, near the administrative border with Al-Quneitra.”
SOHR identified the ten people who died as a result of the strikes as three Syrian officers, five Iranian militiamen of “Al-Quds Force,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) expeditionary arm, and two other militiamen who could be Lebanese or Iraqi.
Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. This time, the military appeared keen to publicise the earlier placement of the bombs and the retaliatory nature of the Israeli strikes.
The Israeli military said the anti-personnel mines had been placed near one of its positions in the Golan Heights by a “Syrian squad led by Iranian forces.” It said a similar incident happened in the same area in August, which also prompted retaliatory strikes on Syria.
According to analysts, the strikes may partly reflect Israel’s concerns that US President-elect Joe Biden will adopt a more conciliatory approach toward Iran. Biden has said he hopes to return the US to Iran’s 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers, to which Israel was staunchly opposed.
Israel’s shadow war against Iran and its allies has meanwhile escalated in recent months, with cyberattacks and occasional exchanges of fire with militants in Syria and Lebanon. It was also disclosed Sunday that Israel and the US had worked together to kill a senior al-Qaeda operative in Iran earlier this year.
Acknowledging role
Israel said the latest strikes targeted sites belonging to Iran’s Quds Force and the Syrian military, including “storage facilities, headquarters and military compounds,” as well as Syrian anti-aircraft missile batteries.
“It is apparent that the message that we wanted to convey last time wasn’t clear enough, not to the Iranians and not to the Syrian regime,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, an Israeli military spokesman, said. “We hope now that the message is clear.”
Conricus said the strikes targeted the Iranian military headquarters in Syria at the Damascus airport, a secret facility that hosts visiting Iranian military officers and the Syrian army’s 7th Division, which oversees the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. He added that Iran’s Quds Force is embedded with the 7th Division.
A former Syrian military commander told Reuters the attacks also targeted a base of the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah in Syria close to the Lebanese border, alongside bases in the southern Damascus area and outposts in the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights where Hezbollah has a presence.
The Jewish state rarely acknowledges individual strikes, but has gone to a great length explaining the motive for its attacks this time.
Israel’s military said it had discovered improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on its side of the armistice line on the Golan Heights on Tuesday.
“We are talking about three connected Claymore anti-personnel charges that were planted close to an IDF position,” army spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters Wednesday.
“This was another attempt led by Iranian Quds forces. The actual planting of the IEDs was by Syrian locals but the guidance, instruction and control was by Iranian Quds forces,” he said.
Israel views Iran as its greatest threat and says it will not tolerate the establishment of a permanent Iranian military presence in Syria, especially near its borders. Iran is a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the country’s civil war and has dispatched military advisers and allied militias to aid his forces.
Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed it in a move that is not internationally recognised.
On October 21, Syrian state media reported a suspected Israeli rocket attack in the southern Quneitra province. The Observatory said three people were killed in the strike that targeted a school used by the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group and Iranian groups. There was no comment from Israel.
Pompeo welcome
The air strikes came hours before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was to land in Israel for talks on Iran that are likely to focus on Israeli fears of a softer policy towards Iran after the Trump administration hands over to Biden in January.
Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who called Trump his country’s strongest-ever ally in the White House, has heaped praise on the administration for its hardline approach towards Iran.
Trump’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign against the Islamic Republic has included sanctions and scrapping of the nuclear deal agreed between Tehran and world powers during Barack Obama’s presidency.
Israeli experts have said Netanyahu is concerned that the president-elect, Obama’s former vice-president, will seek to re-engage Iran diplomatically, possibly by restoring the 2015 nuclear deal Trump pulled the US out of. It is expected to block any accommodationist stances towards Iran insofar as its ties with Washington will allow it to do.
