Pro-Iranian media have accused Israel of three airstrikes in Syria over the last week, which add on to strikes carried out last Thursday and Friday and overnight between Saturday and Sunday. Regional media has noticed.
UAE-based Al-Ain media said this is the “ninth Israeli attack this year against Syrian facilities as a target, and it raised more fears of escalation in the region.”
The increase in incidents appears to indicate that Israel’s “war between the wars” campaign (known in Hebrew as MABAM), which is designed to prevent Iranian entrenchment, may be reaching a new phase.
Has Israel’s “war between the wars” campaign reached a new phase?
The increase in activity indicated by the reports would be in line with Israel’s desire throughout the years to prevent Iranian entrenchment specifically in Syria, and it also comes amid other moving parts in the region.
Iran has been seeking to use Aleppo International Airport in recent months to move arms, shifting away from Damascus. One option could be that Iran saw the recent earthquake in Syria and Turkey as a possible cover for its activities, using civilian cargo or commercial flights to move munitions to Syria.
On the other hand, the increase in strikes comes just as the Syrian regime is actually attempting to do more outreach in the region, including normalization, not only with the Gulf but also with Turkey, something that Russia is pushing for.
According to intelligence estimates, including by the Mossad, Iran was allegedly behind a planned terrorist attack in Greece, which was exposed last week. That came just after Iran began the process of renewing ties with Saudi Arabia, and its moves in the region may be shifting.
Particularly, it has been shifting funding and weapons – which in the past had been earmarked for the Houthis in Yemen to use against Riyadh – to Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Iran has long used Iraq and Syria as a corridor to funnel weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. At the same time, it has increased its threats in Syria via militia proxies against US forces in eastern Syria.
Through MABAM, Israel has sought to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria for years. The Syrian civil war in 2011 led to a power vacuum in Syria that was exploited by Iran, which moved Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps members to Damascus and northern Syria to help the regime fight Syrian rebels.
Iran began to move weapons, including drones and an attempted delivery of air-defense systems, to the T-4 base near Palmyra in 2018. Iran then built up a base near Al-Bukamal in eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq, first with the help of Iran’s Kataib Hezbollah and then with other militia proxies.
Iran warned Israel against targeting its forces, as did Hezbollah, in March after an infiltration in which a man traveled from Lebanon to Israel and planted an improvised explosive device at a junction near Megiddo.
“These warnings did not deter Israel from proceeding with the neutralization of targets it deems legitimate and the destruction of facilities it deems posing a threat to it,” Al-Ain media reported Sunday.
Al-Ain quoted “Western intelligence” as saying that missile strikes between Saturday night and Sunday morning had “targeted the T4 air base west of the ancient city of Palmyra and Al-Dabaa Airport near the city of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border, an area where members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah are located.”
According to this report, members of Lebanese Hezbollah and pro-Iran militias are located at airports in Homs, and there are pro-Iran gunmen in these same areas.
“Western intelligence sources say Iran is increasingly using several civilian airports to deliver more weapons, taking advantage of heavy air traffic with cargo planes delivering relief aid following the devastating earthquake in February,” the report said.
Additionally, according to recent reports, several IRGC members were killed and wounded. Iran currently maintains hundreds of IRGC members in Syria, with some reports claiming as many as 2,500. In the past, the IRGC and Hezbollah have been involved in direct threats to Israel, such as their attempt to launch drones from near the Golan Heights in 2019.
Pro-Iranian media and Iranian regime media, including Beirut-based Al Mayadeen television and Iran’s Tasnim News Agency, have focused on the increase in incidents.
For example, “In less than a week, the Zionist regime also attacked targets in the suburbs of Damascus and before that the Aleppo airport with its missiles and fighters, although the Syrian air defense managed to repulse most of these attacks,” Tasnim reported. Iran and the Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the incidents.
Iran may be using this sensitive time in the region, with all of its moving parts, to establish more threats from Syria. That could involve moving more IRGC members to Syria. It may also mean delivering more dangerous weapons to Lebanon or to pro-Iran proxies in Syria.