The Syrian government accused Israel of bombing this Thursday (12) its two main airports, in the capital Damascus and in Aleppo, the country’s largest city in the north. According to state television, the country’s air defense forces are deployed to repel further fighter jet attacks.
The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has not yet confirmed the action, which, if it actually occurs, increases the risk of a regional conflagration after the deadly attack by the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas last Saturday (7), which killed more than 1,200 Israelis .
Israel is attacking Syria, a dictatorship led by Bashar alAssad that has been regularly embroiled in civil war since 2011. Typically their targets are Lebanese Hezbollah convoys carrying weapons from neighboring Iran both Tehran and the Shiite militiamen are allies of Damascus.
In the latest action on the 3rd, two Syrian soldiers were injured in Deir EzZor, in the northeast of the country. There have already been more serious attacks, such as the bombing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions in the country and Assad’s chemical weapons depots.
On Tuesday (10), a mortar firefight broke out in the Golan Heights region, Syrian areas occupied by Israel since the 1967 SixDay War. The IDF claims to suspect that the attack was initiated by Hezbollah to divert attention from the ongoing operation to invade Gaza and destroy Hamas.
They followed other incidents on Israel’s northern border, such as an attack by Hamas’s longestrange rocket on Haifa, the region’s most important coastal city.
But actions against airports are different because they suggest something coordinated: the first thing an invading army usually does is destroy runways and military and energy infrastructure in the target countries. According to the private broadcaster Sham TV and the state agency Sana, both airfields are unusable.
This would put the escalation of the crisis in Israel’s hands, but it is still too early to know what is really happening. There is a hypothesis that Assad was simply sent a clearer message not to allow Hezbollah’s actions against the Israeli north.
What caused a stir, however, was the callup of 300,000 of the 450,000 Israeli reservists after the declaration of war on Hamas. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has already said that the Middle East will never be the same after his new war.
The IDF regularly boasts 169,500 soldiers, the size of the Syrian army but it is a highly capable force, while Assad’s forces rely on Iran, Hezbollah and the Russian Air Force, which has a large base in Hmeimin (north). has the civil war.
The Russian presence is another important factor, as Syria was the world’s main showcase of Vladimir Putin’s military strength before the Ukraine war. His intervention in the local conflict in 2015 saved Assad’s crumbling government.
But since then, Moscow has maintained a hotline to deescalate possible crises with Tel Aviv, which, for example, informs the Russians about planned attacks on the ally. An important tacit agreement given the massive foreign presence in the conflict at least 19 foreign countries have sided with one side over the years.
It hasn’t always worked, like in 2018 when two Russian planes were shot down by the Syrian defense, which mistook them for an Israeli plane. From then on, coordination improved, also based on the good relationship between Putin and Netanyahu.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely that a largescale attack against Syria would have gone unreported to Moscow. This is likely to cause uproar in Tehran, not least because the attack comes one day before the country’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, visits Damascus.
The Iranians, like the Syrians, do not recognize Israel and supply weapons and money to Hamas, Hezbollah and other radical groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. So far, however, neither Israel nor its guarantor, the United States, have directly accused Iran of being involved in organizing Saturday’s attack.
Hamas has a very independent structure, but analysts say it would be difficult to do something with such impact without at least giving a signal to its sponsors. Tehran denies this, and moderation on all sides suggests no one wants to see an expanded regional war raising questions about the significance of the bombings Syria claims this Thursday.
The US, for its part, warned Iran to stay away from the war in Israel and, to reinforce the message, sent its most powerful aircraft carrier to the ally’s coast, where it landed weapons. In fact, Putin complained about this and asked whether the Americans intended to “bomb Lebanon or what?” and thus “inflame” the crisis.
Meanwhile, preparations for the operation in Gaza continue, with the IDF piling up armor, tanks and soldiers near the territory’s borders. The bombing continued uninterrupted throughout the night and morning, and alarm sirens sounded for Hamas rocket attacks in several regions of Israel.
The essence of this operation is to free the approximately 150 hostages that Hamas captured on Saturday. So far, around 950 Palestinians have died in Gaza, a territory blockaded by Israelis and Egyptians since 2007 when Hamas drove out its Palestinian rivals and dominated the government.