Israeli airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria, an Iranian drone launched from this territory against Israel and an attack linked to the Lebanese group Hezbollah in northern Israel aggravate the covert war between the Iranian-led bloc and a country immersed in a major internal crisis. Shortly before ten o’clock on Sunday night, several Israeli combat fighters and helicopters were mobilized after the announcement of the penetration of an unidentified aircraft from Syria. The Air Force control room detected the drone in the Syrian area and waited for it to cross the border to shoot it down by electronic means in an open field in the north of the Tiberias Sea and to be able to study its parts. The Army’s first estimate indicates that it is Iranian. Hours earlier, Syria had accused Israel of attacking the Homs area at dawn, injuring four soldiers. It was the third attack in four days and targeted bases with the presence of Iranian forces and Hezbollah, according to Western intelligence sources and the opposition to Bashar Asad’s regime. The latest attacks attributed to Israel in Syria focused on one side in a Hezbollah drone installation -according to ImageSat International satellite images- and on the other in infrastructures and members of the Quds Force, the foreign military arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that this weekend reported the death of two officers and advisers on the night from Thursday to Friday. “Military adviser Milad Heidari died on the outskirts of Damascus in a criminal air raid by the Zionist regime,” denounced the Revolutionary Guard, which shortly after also revealed the death of Meghdad Jaafar Mahghani Abadi to whom also defined as “martyr”. “The criminal and false Zionist regime will undoubtedly receive a strong response for this crime,” he warns. Iran argues that its troops are in Syria at the invitation of Assad. The increase in Israel’s blows against Iranian targets (military infrastructure, arms shipments, etc.) in Syria not only follows the policy of recent years of trying to destroy by at night what Iran builds during the day in the neighboring country that it sees as a threat but also has to do with the explosion on March 13. Its manager managed to infiltrate from Lebanon, penetrate tens of kilometers into Israel and activate the explosive at the Megiddo crossing, causing serious injuries to a citizen. Armed with a belt of explosives, he was killed hours later by agents of the anti-terrorist unit.
In the intelligence services they understood that it was serious because it was different since the device did not correspond to the type of explosives used by Hamas or Islamic Jihad but was reminiscent of those activated by Hezbollah against its troops in southern Lebanon. Israel has not officially declared whether the attack was the work of the pro-Iranian group, of any Palestinian faction with or without its help, or carried out by the Revolutionary Guard. The reason why the Israeli retaliation was in Syria and not against Hezbollah in Lebanon is to avoid a reaction from it, as warned by its boss Hassan Nasrallah, which would lead to a war like the one in 2006. Without assuming responsibility for the attacks In Syria, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warns: “All our fronts are tense. The Iranians extend their arms to Judea, Samaria and Gaza and try to entrench themselves in Syria and Lebanon and carry out attacks against us. We will not allow the Iranians and their agent Hezbollah do harm to us. We have not allowed it in the past, we will not allow it now, nor in the future. When necessary, we will push them out of Syria to where they belong, Iran.” Israel entered the sensitive month of Ramadan under a tense situation in the north (Hizbollah-Syria-Iran), center (escalation with Palestinian factions) and south (this Monday he neutralized a drone in Gaza), with his head of government, Benjamin Netanyahu, highly criticized at home and in the White House for the judicial reform that he finally suspended, and with his Defense Minister theoretically dismissed 8 days ago for having asked to stop the judicial plan since the fracture affects national security. Citing precisely the security situation, Netanyahu has deferred a decision on whether to complete Gallant’s removal (sending the dismissal letter) or keep him. “It doesn’t matter if the drone from Syria was sent by Hezbollah or Iran. There is an axis operating against Israel, which smells its weakness and wants all fronts to escalate simultaneously. At the same time, Iran is taking advantage of the crisis to advance its nuclear project,” says former intelligence chief Amos Yadlin on public radio calling for an end to internal division . In this sense, Netanyahu declared this afternoon during a visit to the Tel Nof airbase: “It is important to tell our enemies not to be mistaken about us. Whatever our internal debate, we will fight them inside and outside the country’s borders with all the necessary force to defend ourselves”.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project