The practice of arbitrary strikes on the territory of a sovereignty state… Syria, should be ruled out,” FM spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday, in Moscow’s first response two days after Israel conducted a major operation against Iranian targets in Syria.
She said such strikes added to tensions in the region, something she said was not in the long-term interests of any country there, including Israel.
This response to Israel’s latest strikes refutes the presumption in Israel that Moscow refrained from condemning them out of disapproval of the IRGS Fatteh-110 missile attack on the Golan without prior coordination with Moscow.
Our sources also reveal now that as of Tuesday, Jan 22, decision-making on the issue of Iranian missile strikes against Israel passed directly from Al Qods chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani to the Islamic regime’s highest authority, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His first decision is still unknown.
DEBKAfile’s military sources assert that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu may have been too quick to fire a reply to Gen. Soleimani’s provocative comment to the Kuwaiti Al Jarida, that the only way to prevent further Israeli attacks on Syria was to launch missiles deep into central Israel.
Netanyahu would then lose the elections. The prime minister hit back by saying, “Instead of interfering with the elections, Soleimani had better check the status of the Iranian bases that he is trying to establish in Syria. As long as I’m prime Minister, we won’t stop fighting against them.”
Netanyahu could not be sure that the Kuwait paper had correctly quoted the Iranian Al Qods chief. However, if the quote was accurate, then the situation on Israel’s northern front is so combustible that every word needs to be carefully weighed before it is uttered.
Syria has threatened to strike Israel's Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv unless the UN Security Council ends years of IDF incursions into Syrian airspace, according to Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari.
"Isn’t time now for the UN Security Council to stop the Israeli repeated aggressions on the Syrian Arab Republic territories?" asked al-Jaafari. "Or is it required to draw the attention of the war-makers in this Council by exercising our legitimate right to defend ourself and respond to the Israeli aggression on Damascus International Civil Airport in the same way on Tel Aviv Airport?"
Israeli forces conducted several strikes in recent days on alleged Iranian facilities within Syria, including a rare daylight raid on Syria's international airport south of Damascus, which the Assad government responded ti with a surface-to-surface missile, according to the Times of Israel.
Israel's Sunday night attack involved dozens of strikes reportedly from F-16 jets flying over Lebanon targeting locations in and around southern Damascus. Syria’s Pantsir and Buk air defense missile systems reportedly shot down an unknown number of inbound Israeli rockets according to early unconfirmed video.
In total, 21 people were killed in the exchange, including at least 12 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, according to i24 News, citing watchdog reports.
Israeli air raids in Syria have repeatedly endangered airline flights operating over the region - endangering two civilian aircraft on Christmas day while engaging Syrian targets, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which added that the IDF F-16s approached as civilian jets were landing at Damascus and Beirut airports.
Moscow chimed in on Wednesday as well, calling for Israel to halt what Moscow described as arbitrary air strikes on Syria.
"The practice of arbitrary strikes on the territory of a sovereign state, in this case, we are talking about Syria, should be ruled out," said Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, responding to a question from Russian news agency TASS about the recent Israeli strikes.
"We should never allow Syria, which has suffered years of armed conflict, to be turned into an arena where geopolitical scores are settled," she added.
In September, 15 Russian servicemen were killed after Israeli jets used a Russian II-20 recon plane as cover to place it in the path of a Syrian air defense missile.
Syria urged the UN Security Council to put an end to Israeli incursions, as al-Jaafari accused the United States, Britain and France - which hold permanent memberships on the UN body, of condoning Israeli aggression - ignoring their responsibility to "maintain international peace and security in accordance with international law."
"The restoration sovereignty of the occupied Syrian Golan is a permanent right of Syria that [is] not subject to negotiations," added al-Jaafari.
Israel began occupying the Golan Heights from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War - refraining from extending sovereignty over the region for more than a decade until the Jewish state annexed the area in 1981. Syria has repeatedly argued that the Golan heights is their territory, and had demanded it back.
Israel disagrees.
"Israel will remain forever on the Golan Heights, and the Golan Heights will forever remain in our hands," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in November.
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