Why Israel is waging a shadow war with Iran’s IRGC in Syria

Israel’s airstrikes across Syria come amid suspicions that Iran is using the country to move precision-guided missiles. (AFP/File Photos)
Short Url
Updated 21 January 2022
Follow

Why Israel is waging a shadow war with Iran’s IRGC in Syria

  • Israel has launched airstrikes across Syria amid suspicions that Iran is using the country to move precision-guided missiles
  • Experts believe Israel is trying to minimize Hezbollah’s capacity to retaliate in case it has to attack Iran’s nuclear sites

WASHINGTON D.C.: Israeli airstrikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets in Syria have been growing in scale and frequency in recent months as Tehran seeks to cement its hold over Syrian seaports, airports and overland smuggling routes.

From the Israeli standpoint, Iran’s ability to deliver precision-guided missile technology to Syrian territory via these routes poses a serious strategic threat, allowing Iran and its Hezbollah proxies to attack from short range at short notice in the event of a regional war.

Israel does not always claim responsibility for its strikes on sensitive Syrian facilities controlled by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, giving it a measure of plausible deniability to avoid open conflict or Syrian retaliation.

The country is nevertheless thought to be behind scores of recent strikes across Syrian regime territories, from the capital Damascus and the coastal province of Latakia in the northwest to Deir el-Zour in the east.

Latakia was struck twice in December amid suspicions the IRGC was using the port to move precision-guided weapons. The resulting fireball following one such strike revealed just how much dangerous material Iran was attempting to transfer to its regional terror network.

Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister, issued a stark warning to Iran following the Latakia strikes, vowing that “game-changing” weapons were a red line and Israel would not allow their proliferation.

However, the strikes do not appear to have deterred Iran.

“Preventing Iranian entrenchment in Syria is probably impossible. The question is the rate and quantity of Iranian entrenchment and the quality of this entrenchment,” Tal Beeri, head of the research department at the Alma Research and Education Center in Israel, told Arab News.

“Israel does this without plunging the region into war by attacking only armaments and almost completely refraining from attacking commanders. The attacks are carried out in a targeted manner based on accurate intelligence and only against targets that clearly will not have collateral damage or, alternatively, only minor collateral damage.”

According to Beeri, Israel primarily targets deliveries of components destined for air-defense systems, cruise missiles, long-range missiles, drones and electronic combat systems.




A picture taken on September 9, 2016 from the Isaeli-annexed Golan Heights shows smoke rising from the Syrian village of Jubata Al-Khashab after fire reportedly struck the Israeli-held zone. (AFP/File Photo)

“It is estimated that about 70 percent of the time, the air, sea and land arms-smuggling routes are closed due to Israeli activity,” he said.

“However, although arms smuggling has decreased compared with 2020, we do not know what has managed to evade Israeli intelligence and reached Syria and Lebanon.”

Constant pressure on the IRGC and its smuggling routes is seen by Israeli officials as the best means of preventing, or at least slowing, an Iranian military build-up on its doorstep.

“In light of this, we have been witnessing an increasing volume of airstrikes on Syrian soil that has been taking place for a long time now. This is the only way the ‘mowing the grass’ strategy can succeed,” said Beeri.

“It is not just in Israel’s interest. It is in the interest of all relevant players in the Middle East that are threatened by Iran and the international community’s interests, especially the US, Russia and Europe.”




Syrians hold pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad during a demonstration in front of the UN office in Damascus, 30 July 2006, condemning an Israeli air strike on the southern Lebanese village of Qana. (AFP/File Photo)

Beeri warned that ballistic missiles on Syrian and Lebanese soil could be easily directed toward Europe.

“Nowadays, the Saudis understand this well in light of the fighting in Yemen and the physical threat posed to them from a direct geographic front under Iranian auspices,” he said.

Indeed, in his most recent speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah spoke at length of his group’s intentions to target Saudi Arabia and broader Arab interests not aligned with Iran’s regional hegemonic aims.

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, said that Israeli strikes on targets in Syria are already having an impact.

“Israel has achieved impressive results in its campaign in Syria to prevent advanced weaponry from reaching Iran’s proxies and partners,” Brodsky told Arab News.

“According to recent Israeli estimates, Iran has been unable to make such transfers through the region — via, air, land and sea — around 70 percent of the time. Israel aims to increase the cost for Bashar Assad in allowing such illicit Iranian activity to take place on Syrian soil.”




Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) riding a tank as part of five-days military exercises in three provinces. (AFP)

However, Brodsky suspects it is only a matter of time before Iran finds alternative routes and methods to move its weaponry.

“As it relates to Iran’s calculus, I don’t see Tehran letting up on its designs to use Lebanon and Syria as a launchpad for attacks against Israel in the future. But such Israeli strikes will cause the Iranians to improvise their smuggling routes,” he said.

“According to public reports citing Syrian sources, Iran has ramped up arms transfers by sea in an attempt to avoid Israeli strikes in eastern Syria. That explains the uptick in Israeli strikes targeting Latakia port, with two alone in December.”

Israel’s fast-paced approach to containing Iranian activity coincides with international negotiations in the Austrian capital Vienna aimed at reviving the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or Iran nuclear deal.

Donald Trump, the former US president, withdrew from the accord in 2018, arguing that the agreement reached by the administration of Barack Obama did not go far enough in reducing Iran’s ballistic missile program or its policy of arming and funding militia proxies throughout the Middle East.




Israeli soliders patrol near an Iron Dome defence system, designed to intercept and destroy incoming short-range rockets and artillery shells, in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, on January 20, 2015, two days after an Israeli air strike killed six Hezbollah members in the Syrian-controlled side of the area. (AFP/File Photo)

Israeli defense officials worry that history might repeat itself if US President Joe Biden’s team signs a new nuclear deal that fails to address the issues cited by Trump. These widening strategic differences between the US and Israel could lead to more unilateral Israeli action.

Brodsky believes Israeli strikes against IRGC targets in Syria may also be intended to show Iran that Israel means business, no matter what the US decides in Vienna.

“While the timing of these strikes is driven by the operational needs of the moment, they have a secondary upside for Israel as it seeks to demonstrate to Tehran that it is prepared to hold it accountable militarily, all while the nuclear talks are happening in Vienna,” he said.

Farhad Rezaei, a senior research fellow at the Philos Project, also believes Israel is sending an unambiguous message to Tehran, showing that it is prepared for any scenario, especially if it concludes that Iran’s nuclear program can be halted only by military means.




A damaged hotel near Syria’s Latakia port after an Israeli air strike targeted the port early on December 28, 2021. (AFP)

“My understanding is that Israel is trying to minimize a Hezbollah missile attack in case it has to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, so Israel is bombing the convoys that bring precision-guided missiles to Lebanon via Syria, as well as the workshops in Syria and storage facilities where precision-guided missiles and rockets are built and stored,” Rezaei told Arab News.

“Israeli papers are talking about a multi-domain operation to prepare for a strike, such as training pilots, obtaining aerial-refueling craft, and trying to limit the potential damage from a Hezbollah barrage once the operation is launched.”

For the time being, according to most experts, neither Israel nor Iran appears interested in starting an open conflict. But with ever more advanced Iranian missile technology finding its way into Hezbollah hands and an isolated Syrian regime growing increasingly reliant on Iran, the stakes are getting higher.

If a fresh nuclear deal is signed in Vienna without additional restrictions on IRGC activity and Iranian missile proliferation, then the chances of a military escalation will rise dramatically.


Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows

Updated 5 sec ago
Follow

Libyan coast guards train in Greece under plan to stem migrant flows

ATHENS: Libyan coast guard officers have started training on the Greek island of Crete as part of a plan to strengthen cooperation and help the two countries stem a surge in migrant arrivals, Greek sources said on Wednesday.
Relations between Greece and Libya have been strained by a maritime boundary agreement signed in 2019 between the Tripoli-based Libyan government and Turkiye, Greece’s long-standing foe.
A tender that Greece launched this year to develop hydrocarbon resources off Crete revived those tensions, while a spike in migrant flows from North Africa to Europe has prompted Athens to deploy frigates off Libya and pass legislation banning migrants arriving from Libya by sea from requesting asylum.
The division of Libya by factional conflict into eastern and western sections for over a decade has further complicated relations. Greece says it is determined to continue talking to both the Tripoli-based government and a parallel administration based in Benghazi to the east.
So far, coast guard officers from eastern Libya have been training in Greece, including areas such as patrolling and search and rescue operations. Coast guard officers from western Libya are expected to also participate in the training, the sources said.
As part of efforts to improve relations, Athens last week invited Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli to start talks on demarcating exclusive economic zones in the Mediterranean Sea.
Missions from both countries are expected to hold talks on maritime zones in the coming months, the Greek sources said.

Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

Updated 44 min 28 sec ago
Follow

Israeli rights groups break taboo with accusations of genocide

  • Israeli human rights groups brace for backlash
  • Deeply sensitive accusation in Israel, founded after Holocaust

JERUSALEM: When two human rights groups became the first major voices in Israel to accuse the state of committing genocide in Gaza, breaking a taboo in a country founded after the Holocaust, they were prepared for a backlash.
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel released reports at a press conference in Jerusalem on Monday, saying Israel was carrying out “coordinated, deliberate action to destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.”
That marked the strongest possible accusation against the state, which vehemently denies it. The charge of genocide is deeply sensitive in Israel because of its origins in the work of Jewish legal scholars in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust. Israeli officials have rejected genocide allegations as antisemitic.
So Sarit Michaeli, B’Tselem’s international director, said the group expected to face attacks for making the claim in a country still traumatized by October 7, 2023.
“We’ve looked into all of the risks that we could be facing. These are legal, reputation, media risks, other types of risk, societal risks and we’ve done work to try and mitigate these risks,” said Michaeli, whose organization is seen as being on the political fringe in Israel but is respected internationally.
“We are also quite experienced in attacks by the government or social media, so this is not the first time.” It’s not unrealistic “to expect this issue, which is so fraught and so deeply contentious within Israeli society and internationally to lead to an even greater reaction,” she said.
Israel’s foreign ministry and prime minister’s office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Shortly after the reports were released on Monday, government spokesperson David Mencer said: “Yes, of course we have free speech in Israel.” He strongly rejected the reports’ findings and said that such accusations fostered anti-semitism abroad.
Some Israelis have expressed concern over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, destroyed much of the enclave and led to widespread hunger.
An international global hunger monitor said on Tuesday a famine scenario was unfolding in the Gaza Strip, with malnutrition soaring, children under five dying of hunger-related causes and humanitarian access severely restricted.
“For me, life is life, and it’s sad. No one should die there,” said nurse Shmuel Sherenzon, 31.
But the Israeli public generally rejects allegations of genocide.
Most of the 1,200 people killed and the 251 taken hostage to Gaza in the October 7 attacks in southern Israel were civilians, including men, women, children and the elderly.
In an editorial titled “Why are we blind to Gaza?” published on the mainstream news site Ynet last week, Israeli journalist Sever Plocker said images of ordinary Palestinians rejoicing over the attacks in and even following the militants to take part in violence made it almost impossible for Israelis to feel compassion for Gazans in the months that followed.
“The crimes of Hamas on October 7 have deeply burned – for generations – the consciousness of the entire Jewish public in Israel, which now interprets the destruction and killing in Gaza as a deterrent retaliation and therefore also morally legitimate.”
Israel has fended off accusations of genocide since the early days of the Gaza war, including a case brought by South Africa at the International Court of Justice in the Hague that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned as “outrageous.”
While Israeli human rights groups say it can be difficult working under Israel’s far-right government, they don’t experience the kind of tough crackdowns their counterparts face in other parts of the Middle East.
Israel has consistently said its actions in Gaza are justified as self-defense and accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge the militant group denies.
Israeli media has focused more on the plight of hostages taken by Hamas, in the worst single attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
In this atmosphere, for B’Tselem’s Israeli staff members to come to the stark conclusion that their own country was guilty of genocide was emotionally challenging, said Yuli Novak, the organization’s executive director.
“It’s really incomprehensible, it’s a phenomena that the mind cannot bear,” Novak said, choking up.
“I think many of our colleagues are struggling at the moment, not only fear of sanctions but also to fully grasp this thing.”
Guy Shalev, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, said the organization faced a “wall of denial.”
It has been under pressure for months and is expecting a stronger backlash after releasing its report.
“Bureaucratic, legal, financial institutions such as banks freezing accounts including ours, and some of the challenges we expect to see in the next days...these efforts will intensify,” he told Reuters.


Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

Updated 48 min 12 sec ago
Follow

Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

  • Turkiye to start providing Syria with natural gas on Aug 2, minister says

ANKARA: Turkiye will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Syria from Saturday, the energy minister said on Wednesday.
Syria’s Islamist authorities, who toppled Bashar Assad in December, are seeking to rebuild the country’s infrastructure and economy after almost 14 years of civil war.
The conflict badly damaged Syria’s power infrastructure, leading to cuts that can last for more than 20 hours a day.
“We will start exporting natural gas from Azerbaijan to Aleppo via Kilis,” a province in southernmost Turkiye near the Syrian border, Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar said.
In May, Syrian Energy Minister Mohammad Al-Bashir said Damascus and Ankara had reached a deal for Turkiye to supply natural gas to the war-torn country via a pipeline in the north.
Gas-rich Azerbaijan is a historic ally of Turkiye which maintains close ties with the Syrian transitional government.


At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official

Updated 54 min 37 sec ago
Follow

At least 5 dead in clashes between Uganda, South Sudan forces: official

  • It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force

JUBA: At least five South Sudan security forces were killed in clashes with the Ugandan army near the countries’ shared border earlier this week, local officials said Wednesday.
Uganda has a history of involvement in impoverished South Sudan, and has long provided military support to President Salva Kiir, including a deployment of special forces since March.
It was not clear what triggered the clashes on Monday between the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) and government troops in Central Equatoria State that were confirmed by South Sudanese People’s Defense Force (SSPDF).
Police in Kajo Keji county, where the clashes took place, said “two SSPDF officers, two prison officers and a police officer” were killed, according to a statement from local authorities on Wednesday.
The statement quoted local army commander Henry Buri as saying the Ugandan forces “were heavily armed with tanks and artilleries,” and had targeted 19 “joint operation” forces.
There was no comment from the Ugandan government.
An earlier statement by local county officials said there had been “loss of lives and injuries from both sides.”
Uganda sent troops to support Kiir when civil war broke out in the country in 2013, just two years after it gained independence from Sudan.
The civil war between Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, lasted five years and left some 400,000 dead before a power-sharing agreement was reached in 2018.
Uganda again deployed special forces in March this year as Kiir moved once again against Machar, eventually placing him under house arrest.
That has all but buried the power-sharing deal and triggered conflict between the army and members of a militia from Machar’s ethnic Nuer community.
The Ugandan army has been accused of using chemical weapons, namely barrel bombs containing a flammable liquid that killed civilians, against Nuer militias in South Sudan’s northeast.
Uganda has denied the accusations.


African Union says does ‘not recognize’ Sudan parallel govt

Updated 30 July 2025
Follow

African Union says does ‘not recognize’ Sudan parallel govt

  • A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces
  • The AU called on all member states and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan

ADDIS ABABA: The African Union said on Wednesday it would not recognize a “so-called parallel government” in Sudan, urging its members to follow suit.
A bitter two-year civil war in Sudan has pitted the government against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which announced it was forming a government and appointed a prime minister on Saturday.
The AU’s Peace and Security Council “called on all AU Member States and the international community to reject the fragmentation of Sudan and not recognize the so-called “parallel government” which has serious consequences on the peace efforts and the existential future of the country,” it said in a statement.