Israel shifts to deadlier strikes on Iran-linked targets in Syria

Israel is carrying out an unprecedented wave of deadly strikes in Syria targeting cargo trucks, infrastructure and people involved in Iran’s weapons lifeline to its proxies in the region, six sources with direct knowledge of the matter have told Reuters.

The sources, including a Syrian military intelligence officer and a commander in the regional alliance backing Damascus, said that the apartheid state has shifted strategies following the 7 October Hamas attack and the subsequent Israeli bombing campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon.

Although Israel has struck Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, including in areas where Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia has been active, it is now unleashing deadlier, more frequent air raids against Iranian arms transfers and air defence systems in Syria, the sources said.

The commander in the regional alliance and two additional sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking said that Israel had abandoned the unspoken “rules of the game” that previously characterised its strikes in Syria, and seemed “no longer cautious” about inflicting heavy casualties on Hezbollah there. “They used to fire warning shots; they’d hit near the truck, our guys would get out of the truck, and then they’d hit the truck,” he explained, describing Israeli raids on arms transfers handled by Hezbollah before 7 October.

“Now that’s over. Israel is now unleashing deadlier, more frequent air raids against Iranian arms transfers and air defence systems in Syria. They bomb everyone directly. They bomb to kill.”

READ: Syria says Israeli attack on Damascus outskirts caused material damage — SANA

The intensified air campaign has killed 19 Hezbollah members in Syria in three months, more than twice the number for the rest of 2023, according to a Reuters count. More than 130 Hezbollah fighters have also been killed by Israeli shelling of southern Lebanon in the same period.

The Israeli military did not respond to questions from Reuters about its escalating campaign. A senior Israeli official, briefing journalists on condition of anonymity, said Hezbollah had initiated this round of fighting with attacks on 8 October, and that Israel’s strategy was one of retaliation.

Asked last month about a reported Israeli strike in Syria, Israel’s military chief said that Israeli forces work throughout the region and take “whatever action necessary” to show Israel’s determination to defend itself.

Israel began striking Iran-linked targets in Syria years ago, but it had appeared to avoid killing Hezbollah members if it could. A regional intelligence officer said that the Zionist state feared that a high casualty figure would prompt retaliation from Hezbollah in Lebanon against Israeli villages just across the border. However, with exchanges of fire now taking place on a daily basis since 7 October, Israel is willing to be “less cautious and less restrained in killing Lebanese Hezbollah in Syria.”

In a televised address on 5 January, Hezbollah head Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that the group had lost “a number of fighters in Israeli shelling in Syria in several places in the past three months. We had a formula before the [Hamas] Operation Al-Aqsa Flood; if [Israel] killed any of our brothers in Syria, we would respond on the Lebanon front, which was calm. Practically, this formula’s conditions have changed. Why? Because the whole front is lit up now.”

An Israeli drone strike on 8 December killed three Hezbollah fighters said to have been planning possible operations in northern Israel, and another strike on Quneitra in southern Syria targeted two Hezbollah fighters responsible for weapons transfers, the commander in the pro-Syrian alliance said. Four more were killed in late December in a strike on buildings and trucks being used by Iran-aligned militia groups along Syria’s eastern border with Iraq.

The strikes have also hit Islamic Revolutionary Guards in Syria. One in early December killed two Guard Corps members, and another on 25 December killed a senior adviser to the IRGC who was overseeing military coordination between Syria and Iran. “He would never have been killed before the new reality that came into force after 7 October,” said one source familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking and operations in Syria.

Other Israeli air strikes have hit infrastructure in southern Syria: one air defence base was struck on 28 December after an anti-aircraft defence system was also hit.

The Syrian intelligence officer said the strikes were hitting defensive equipment even before troops could install it. The airports in Syria’s capital Damascus and northern Aleppo, which Iran has used to transfer arms, have been rendered almost continually out of service by Israeli air strikes.

“Israel is telling [Syrian President Bashar] Al-Assad: you are allowing Iranians and Hezbollah to transfer weapons and entrench themselves, so we will disrupt your lifeline and you will find yourself in a tight spot,” the regional intelligence source said.

Israel has said repeatedly that it does not seek a second war front in Lebanon or Syria. Despite the intensification, the Syrian military — which leaned heavily on both Hezbollah and Iran while fighting rebels during its civil war — has not opened its own front. “We don’t want to put ourselves in a state of confrontation or open war with Israel,” said the Syrian intelligence officer.

Assad himself was discouraged from taking any action in support of Hamas after he received threats by Israel, three sources with direct knowledge of the threat told Reuters. Two of the sources said that the retaliation threats by Israel were delivered by the UAE, but a UAE official said such assertions were “baseless and unfounded.” There was no response from Syria’s information ministry to a request from Reuters for comment on the allegations.

The third source said the message resonated with Hezbollah. “Hezbollah took that threat seriously as it would have cost them everything they had built in Syria in recent years,” he pointed out.

READ: Hezbollah conducted 670 operations against Israel in last 3 months: Nasrallah