Israel said early Thursday that Iranian Revolutionary Guards based in Syria fired 20 missiles at forward operating posts in the Golan Heights that Israel has occupied for more than half a century since the so-called Six-Day War in 1967.
The BBC reported that all but four of the missiles fell short and those that didn’t were intercepted. In return, the Israeli Defense Forces blasted 70 targets that it says were the bulk of Iran’s infrastructure in Syria. Iranian forces have been backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, which has been engaged in a devastating civil war since 2011. Neither side announced any casualties:
An IDF statement said fighter jets had struck "dozens of military targets" belonging to Iran inside Syria. They included:
- Intelligence sites associated with Iran and the "Radical Axis" - a term Israeli officials use to refer to an alliance between Iran, Syria, Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Palestinian militant groups such as Hamas
- A logistics headquarters belonging to the Quds Force
- A military logistics compound in Kiswah, a town south of Damascus
- An Iranian military compound north of Damascus
- Quds Force munition storage warehouses at Damascus International Airport
- Intelligence systems and posts associated with the Quds Force
- Observation and military posts and munition in the Golan demilitarised zone
- The Iranian launcher from which the rockets were fired overnight
The IDF said it had also targeted several Syrian military air defence systems after they fired at the Israeli fighter jets despite an Israeli "warning".
The Washington Post reported Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman as saying that the IDF strikes targeted “almost all of the Iranian infrastructure in Syria.”
Analysts say President Trump’s scrapping of the Iran deal means it has less to lose by retaliating, and the move has added weight to hard-liners in the Islamic Republic who want to show strength.
“What we did tonight is only the tip of the iceberg of the Israeli Army’s capability,” [IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Menalis] said Thursday morning on Israel Army Radio.
The Guardian reported:
The occupied Golan Heights has been on high alert since Donald Trump confirmed he was pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal.
“The IDF views this Iranian attack very severely,” Conricus said. “This event is not over.”
In the early hours of Thursday morning, the IDF’s Arabic-language Twitter account said its military was “moving” against Iranian targets in Syria and warned Damascus not to intervene. Conricus said Israel had notified Russia before the strikes began.
The attack on the Golan Heights was the first time that Iranian forces have struck Israeli-held territory directly. It and the IDF response mark a serious ratcheting up of what could become all-out war between the two antagonists.