When reports surface of Israeli air strikes on targets in Syria, that’s usually a sign that Iran has once again been caught trying to turn Syria into a new front against Israel. Therefore, reports from recent days suggest that the Islamic Republic is trying to build new attack bases on Syrian soil.
Iran has worked hard for the past several years to move precision-guided missiles into Syria along with ballistic missiles, explosive drones, and surface-to-surface rockets. It has also blended its weapons production activities into Syrian military installations, and tried to set up terror cells on the Syrian border with Israel for conducting future cross-border raids.
As part of that effort, Iranian-backed Hezbollah has sought to establish a terror network on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights — an initiative the Israel Defense Forces has dubbed the “Golan Terror Network.”
Led by Ali Musa Daqduq, a senior Hezbollah operative and former commander of an elite Hezbollah force, the network is a complex and secretive terror infrastructure, highly compartmentalized, which had begun building intelligence-gathering posts near the border and planning attacks on Israel from Syria.
In April, the IDF released a short video showing Luau Ali Ahmad Assad, commander of the Syrian Armed Forces 1st Corps, visiting Hezbollah positions near the Israeli border. An IDF Arabic-language spokesman said at the time that Hezbollah was seeking to build a terror infrastructure in Syria to attack Israel, and warned that Damascus will be held accountable for any hostilities staged by Hezbollah
Israel has launched several hundred preventive air strikes to torpedo Iran’s designs. For the most part, this shadow war has raged just beneath the surface, and both sides have been able to prevent it from sliding into open conflict. But every week carries the potential for a new escalation.
“Iran is significantly reducing the scope of its forces in Syria and even evacuating a number of bases,” former defense minister Naftali Bennett said last month. “Though Iran has begun the withdrawal process from Syria, we need to complete the work. It’s in reach.”
Yet such hopes appeared to be premature. Two months after the pandemic’s outbreak, it appears that Iran “is returning to its routine conduct” in the region, a report last month from the Meir Amit Center for Intelligence and Terrorism Information stated.
The report said that Iran’s regional activities are “reverting to their normal patterns.”
But Israeli officials signaled that the coronavirus pandemic would not slow any of their active defense operations either.
“Corona has not at all decreased our determination to act against Iranian aggression. I reiterate, Israel will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons, and will continue to act methodically against Iran’s efforts to entrench itself on our borders,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.
On the same day, media reports said 12 people were killed in airstrikes targeting a pro-Iranian militia in eastern Syria’s Deir Ezzor region. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog, the Iranian positions were hit with eight airstrikes. They had reportedly been refortified and restocked three days earlier, and munitions and vehicles were destroyed in the strike.
Deir Ezzor is a familiar name to those who track Iranian efforts to build a land corridor that connects Iran and Iraq to Syria and Lebanon. This eastern Syrian region, near the Iraqi border, has been the scene of stubborn and repeated Iranian efforts to smuggle advanced weapons and militia members into Syria by land.
Iran’s malign activities in Syria are far from disappearing. It seems likely that the Iranian Quds Force, under the leadership of its new chief, Gen. Esmail Qaani, is trying to pick up where the late Qassem Soleimani, assassinated in a US drone strike in Baghdad in January, left off.
Just as Soleimani worked to smuggle missiles, drones, and other weapons into Syria, the recent reports indicate that Qaani is following the same game plan — and running into the same problems that Soleimani did.
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