In rare admission, Israel says it struck Iranian targets in Syria 200 times in last two years
Israel has been carrying out military strikes in Syria against suspected arms transfers and deployments by Iranian forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies
Israel has carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the past two years, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, in a rare summary of its campaign.
According to regional sources, Israel began carrying out military strikes in Syria in 2013 against suspected arms transfers and deployments by Iranian forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies, both Damascus’s partners in Syria’s civil war.
But Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz used a speech to give a more general summary of Syria missions, prompted by a military briefing given to local media earlier in the day.
Talks may decide fate of Syrian rebel bastion, bracing for attack
“Only just now it was published – in the name of military sources, so I can quote it too – that in the last two years Israel has taken military action more than 200 times within Syria itself,” Katz told a conference hosted by the IDC Herzliya college.
“Understand the significance of this matter in terms of preserving the red line, preventing the things that Iran has done, is doing and is trying to do against Israel from Syria.”
Asked to confirm Katz’s comments, an Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel had carried out around 200 attacks within Syria over the past year and a half.
Israel, which monitors neighbouring Syria intensively, has long alleged that Iran came to assist the Damascus government, in part, to set up a permanent garrison there, effectively forming an extended anti-Israel front with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Iran, Israel’s arch-foe, has been a core supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout the seven-year-old civil war, sending military advisers as well as materiel and regional Shiite militias that it backs.
Israel’s Syria strikes have been largely ignored by Russia, Israel’s big-power backer, and backed by the United States.
On Monday, Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman signalled that the country could also attack suspected Iranian military targets in Iraq, where Reuters has reported the deployment of ballistic missiles by Tehran.
Briefing reporters on Tuesday, a senior Israeli military officer who requested anonymity said that Israel believed Iran was using Iraqi territory as a conduit for missile transfers to Syria.
