IDF Keeps Pounding Syrian Sites

IDF Keeps Pounding Syrian Sites

Hugh Fitzgerald

Israel never believed it could trust the new regime in Syria headed by the former member of Al Qaeda Ahmad al-Sharaa. He has traded in his military fatigues for a suit and tie, in order to assuage fears both in the West and in the rich Arab states of the Gulf that he is an extremist. He no doubt hopes that the West and the rich Arabs will supply the tens of billions of dollars that will be required to repair the damaged infrastructure in Syria, so the charade must continue. He has also made speeches about protecting minorities. But many of those who belonged to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel force he commanded, and now are members of Syria’s security services, have been murdering thousands of Alawite civilians in Latakia. Christians, too, have been killed by jihadists in recent weeks. And the Druze in southern Syria have felt so threatened, after seeing what was done to the Alawites, that some Druze leaders have called openly for Israel to protect them.

Beginning just after Damascus fell to HTS, and Assad had fled to Russia, Israel’s air force and navy conducted over 480 strikes in Syria in the span of 48 hours, 350 of which targeted airfields, anti-aircraft batteries, missiles, drones, fighter jets, tanks, and weapon production sites, destroying between 70% and 80% of Syria’s strategic weapons.It also entirely destroyed Syria’s naval fleet.

Since then, it has continued to attack targets in Syria, including most recently military targets in the city of Palmyra and the Tiyas Air Base in central Syria on Friday night [March 21]. More on these latest attacks can be found here: “WATCH: IDF strikes military targets in Palmyra, Tiyas Air Base in central Syria,” Jerusalem Post, March 22, 2025:

The IDF struck military targets in the city of Palmyra and the Tiyas Air Base in central Syria on Friday night, the military announced.

The IDF said that these targets still had strategic military capabilities at the time of the attack. The IAF had been monitoring the bases prior to the attack, and then struck the targets to continue maintaining air superiority in the region, according to Walla….

Friday’s latest wave of strikes comes four days after the IDF targeted former Syrian army outposts in the central Homs province on Tuesday, which were in the villages of Shinshar and Shamsin.

The day before the strikes in the Homs province, Israeli forces targeted military infrastructure in the province of Daraa that contained weapons and military equipment from the Assad regime….

Defense Minister Israel Katz had told the Post last week that the presence of Israeli forces on Mount Hermon “protects Israel from a range of Syrian, Hamas, and Iranian threats.

“There are a series of threats. This regime is a jihadist regime. It put on a mask, but then it removed its mask,” he added….

And now, the series of airstrikes by the IDF that began on December 8 and 9 — when in 48 hours the Israelis carried out 480 airstrikes — and have continued, intermittently, ever since, making sure that sites that had been of secondary importance and initially spared, or where the original damage turned out to be incomplete, were now being systematically destroyed, as with the destruction just wrought at the T-4 airbase. It’s now a drawn-out mopping-up operation, and no part of Syria is immune to Israeli airstrikes.

Now more than 90% of Syria’s military hardware has been destroyed. So have its airbases and its navy. By reducing to rubble so much of the weapons wherewithal that would otherwise have fallen into the hands of the jihadist regime in Damascus, the IDF has not only made itself more secure, but performed a service to all non-Muslims. Best of all, given the current state of its military, there is nothing the Syrians can do to prevent Israeli attacks. Any attempt by the Syrian regime to retaliate would lead to a crushing response by the IDF, as Ahmad al-Sharaa is well aware. That is why the Syrians, while protesting verbally against the IDF’s attacks, have not dared to launch even a single drone or fired a single rifle in Israel’s direction.