Iran threatens Israel during Russia summit amid Gaza rocket barrage
Joel Gehrke
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Syrian dictator Bashar Assad will provide a launchpad for new attacks against Israel, a senior Iranian official predicted during a Russia-hosted summit.
“We are sure that the Syrian Army will respond to the Israeli raids at a proper time,” Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian said Wednesday. “All the signs and variables testify to the transition process in the world order, the decline of the U.S. power, and the strengthening of regionalism.”
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Israeli officials have conducted airstrikes in Syria for years, with the stated goal of preventing Iranian forces, which have fought in tandem with Russia to preserve the Assad regime, from establishing military outposts on Israeli borders. Abdollahian renewed that threat from Moscow as Assad gained re-admission to the Arab League, a diplomatic coup for the pariah regime, and Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed terrorist group in Gaza.
“We have hit Islamic Jihad with the most significant blow it has ever suffered,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday following a strike that reportedly killed three of the group’s senior leaders. “We say to the terrorists: We see you everywhere; you cannot hide, and we choose where and when to hit you.”
Assad’s entrenchment in Damascus figures into a broader move by Iran to install its forces and allies near and around Israel. Iran’s Defense Ministry made a public pledge this week to “equip the Syrian Armed Forces with the most advanced defensive weapons,” according to Iranian media. Syria’s military responded by signaling Assad’s willingness to reinforce Iran’s “resistance” against Israel.
“Syria’s security and stability have been established with the support of the Iranian brothers,” Syrian general Ali Abbas said this week, per Middle East Monitor. “Strengthening Syria’s defense base will make it more capable of fighting terrorism as one of the axes of resistance.”
And Iranian officials hope that the summit in Moscow will increase pressure for a withdrawal of United States special forces from northern Syria, where they fought alongside Kurdish militia to dismantle the Islamic State’s caliphate. The meeting was attended by Turkey, a NATO ally but also a fierce opponent of U.S. cooperation with the Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish militias, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan regards as affiliates of the PKK, a group of Turkish Kurds long designated as a foreign terrorist organization due to their history of militant separatism.
“We hope that the four-sided Moscow meeting would send a strong message on Syria and Turkey’s focus on a political solution, withdrawal of military forces, and expulsion of occupation forces such as the United States from Northern Syria,” Abdohallian said.
Israeli Defense Forces targeted the Islamic Jihad militant leaders on Tuesday in an operation that reportedly killed 12 Palestinian civilians in addition to the three commanders. The militant group responded by firing more than 300 rockets into Israel. Their barrage raised the prospect of a more intense conflict, but Egypt reportedly has been working to broker a ceasefire, and Israeli officials have signaled that they want to avoid a wider clash with Hamas, the more powerful terrorist group in Gaza.
“We are striking who is launching rockets at us,” IDF spokesman David Hagari told the Times of Israel. “Islamic Jihad is leading this rocket fire. If other factions join, we will respond against them too.”
That implied effort to contain this incident to a clash with Islamic Jihad, which Israeli officials blame for a fusillade of rockets and mortars fired into Israel last week, is unfolding in the context of an intensifying “shadow war” between Israel and Iran.
“The Zionists who were boastful a few months ago are now shocked to see that more than 30 armed attacks take place in the occupied territories each day,” Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Major General Hossein Salami said Tuesday, per Iranian media. “Big events are on the verge of happening. Hopes have been revived and justice will dawn again in the region … This is the pattern of the collapse of powers that happens surprisingly.”
Such celebrations of terrorist attacks against Israel correspond to intensifying Israeli efforts to degrade Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which has continued to progress despite President Joe Biden’s desire to rehabilitate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Yet Netanyahu has avoided a major clash with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist group that looms as Iran’s most powerful proxy on Israel’s borders and reportedly possesses a vast arsenal of rockets and a growing stockpile of Iranian precision-guided munitions.
“As Israel has taken the fight inside Iran, not just against proxies on its border, Iran [is] now trying to back its proxy muscles to distract Israel, to keep them busy on their borders and away from operations inside Iran,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior adviser Richard Goldberg told the Washington Examiner. “So there’s a lot of moving parts here … and multiple reasons for Israeli action — both in response to Iranian aggression on their borders, but also in preparation for the big show, as we would call it, which is ultimately an Israeli strike inside Iran.”
Lebanese Hezbollah’s potential to bombard Israel in retaliation for a major military strike against Iran adds to the significance of the IDF’s use of David’s Sling, a new and previously unproven medium-range air defense system, to down a rocket fired from Gaza on Wednesday.
“The decision to activate David’s Sling and demonstrate its successful capability for the first time is a clear message to other actors, most specifically Hezbollah, and ultimately to Tehran to let them know that the Israeli layered defense capability has improved and that they are not afraid of a confrontation on their northern border, should it come to that,” said Goldberg, the FDD expert.
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Egyptian officials reportedly have worked to broker a ceasefire between Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, but the two sides continued to exchange blows Wednesday even after initial reports of a deal.
“I hope that we will bring it to an end soon, but we are ready for it to be protracted,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday.