Iran claims that its citizens are in Syria mainly to help with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Israel has good reason to think — and act — otherwise. Asked to comment on reports that Iran was building highly lethal weapons– precision-guided missiles — for Hezbollah, Iran feigned indignation. “Israel Intensifying Air War in Syria Against Iranian Encroachment,” Algemeiner, April 22, 2021:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Iran has said it has military advisers in Syria to help Assad’s forces, and will continue a policy “resisting” US and Israeli power in the wider Middle East.
Nothing says “resisting” Israeli power like shipping 150,000 missiles to Hezbollah for future launches against Israel, even though at the time those missiles were shipped Israel had not attacked a single Iranian target, inside or outside Iran.
Over the past year, Israeli warplanes, missiles and drones have hit a far wider range of targets — from suspected Iranian guided missile research and production sites to arms storage depots — than in the previous five years, said three Israeli officials and a senior Western official based in the region.
In the latest strike on Thursday, Israel hit al Dumair on the northeastern outskirts of Damascus which it has repeatedly hit in the past and where suspected Iranian-backed militias have a strong presence.
Jane’s defense news analysts said that over a three-year span Israel had used 4,239 weapons against 955 targets with 70% of Israeli pilots involved in the campaign, with the new F-35I Adir fighter jets leading dozens of missions.
It’s a fantastic record. In the last decade of bombing sites in Syria, the Israelis have lost exactly one plane, an F-16, which crashed inside Israel, as did the pilot, who has since recovered from his wounds. In the last three years alone, Israel has hit almost a thousand targets, and many of them have been hit repeatedly, as 4,239 weapons were used. Israel keeps upping both the number of targets, and the number of hits, whether by bombs, missiles, or drones.
“It’s been…months of painful hits, not (any more) limited to the Golan Heights or southern Syria (close to Israel) or around the outskirts of Damascus, they’ve gone north to Aleppo and Hama and to Al Bukamal on the Iraqi border,” a Syrian military defector, Brigadier General Ahmad Rahal, told Reuters.
The Iranians have learned by experience that Israel was most likely to hit their bases closest to Israel, either near the Golan or elsewhere in southern Syria. So they started to put their missile factories further north, in hopes of evading detection by Israel. The Israelis, however, having not been fooled, then started to extend their targets much further north, in Aleppo and Hama, and at Al Bukamal, apparently a very important target on the border with Iraq; no place in Syria is now safe from Israel’s high-flying “lawn mowers.”
However, some underground compounds stretch as many as 6.2 miles, making them difficult to penetrate thoroughly even for Israel’s satellite-guided, 500-pound “bunker-buster” bombs, according to a senior Western intelligence source.
“There are fortifications underground that Israel cannot reach…, tunnels that maybe it knows where they begin but not where they lead to,” said a Syrian military source, who said he worked for years in one of the compounds.
“You have warehouses dug into the mountains and equipped to be resistant even to bunker busters,” he told Reuters.
Multiple Ordnance Penetrators – bunker-busters – come in all sizes. Israel has 500-pounders, but these are very small bunker busters, apparently not powerful enough to destroy the Iranian targets that have been built underground. How far underground is not said. But what Israel clearly needs, and should be at the top of the list of what the Jewish state needs to preserve its QME (Qualitative Military Edge) are much larger, more powerful MOPs. The US Air Force has the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP); it’s a precision-guided, 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb. Those are what Israel’s friends in Washington should insist be sold to the Jewish state, so that it can reach and destroy Iran’s underground facilities, both those that manufacture precision-guided missiles inside Syria, and the nuclear facilities in Iran that, even more worrisome, have been built deep inside mountains at Fordow and Natanz.
Some of the suspected Iranian military research and development (R&D) activities have been disrupted by repeated strikes, satellite images sent to Reuters indicate.
Israeli bombs obliterated underground sections of the Imam Ali military base near the Al Bukamal crossing with Iraq in January, one of several over the last year that took out tunnels used to store trucks or move advanced weapons systems, according to two Western officials familiar with the strikes….
“They are modifying and upgrading precision-guided Iranian rockets and the arsenal of Hezbollah in Syria at these sites…,” said Ismail Ayoub, a former Syrian air force lieutenant-colonel who defected to Jordan in 2012 and said he remains in contact with comrades in the air force.
Judging by the number of high-ranking Syrian officers mentioned in this report who have defected and have been providing confirmation about what the Iranians have been doing at so many different sites, at the Imam Ali airbase at Al Bukamal in southeastern Syria, near Masyaf in western Syria, near Aleppo and Hama in northern Syria, the Israelis have been kept well-informed, even beyond what their satellite imaging and other non-human means of detection provide.
In a sign of Iranian concern over Israel’s intensifying campaign, Tehran’s military chief of staff, Major General Mohammad Bagheri, visited the Safira R&D centre in Aleppo province in July soon after an Israeli air strike there, according to a Syrian army officer briefed on Bagheri’s tour.
Israel’s expanding air war has prompted Iranian-backed militia forces to redeploy from forward posts near Syria’s southwest border with Israel toward the eastern frontier, several intelligence officials and Syrian military defectors said.
That move by Iranian-backed forces away from the Syrian border with Israel hasn’t brought them any greater safety. No part of Syria is safe from Israel’s bombers, its missiles, its drones. One bit of evidence is the successful Israeli attack on the Safira R&D center near Aleppo, far from the border, an attack that apparently proved so devastating that the Iranian army’s chief of staff himself showed up to view the destruction.
Residents of Syria’s eastern Deir al-Zor region said dozens of decoy rocket launchpads and deserted farm barracks with Iranian militia flags now dot main highways in efforts to divert Israel away from genuine targets.
An imaginative deception, but how long will it take Israel to come up with a solution, by being able to “see through” with infrared devices which structures are deserted and which have weapons and/or humans inside them? Would anyone care to bet against the Israelis who are undoubtedly working on that detection problem – if they haven’t already solved it — right now? When have the Israelis ever been stymied for long?
Since January the Quds Force, the extra-territorial special forces arm of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guards, has bolstered its presence around Al Bukamal, flanking a road corridor for heavy weapons convoys from Iraq, according to two Israeli intelligence sources, citing intensified drone surveillance and Syrian contacts on the ground.
Israeli and Western officials said that if Israel had not escalated its air campaign, Iran would have carved out a strategic staging ground close to Israel’s doorstep by now.
“Had (Israel) not intervened, the situation could have been 10 times worse. The Iranians are paying an ongoing price with many weapons being destroyed. Of course it has an impact on their activities but it does not solve the problem. Iran is determined to stay in Syria,” Kuperwasser said.
Is Iran more determined to stay in Syria than Israel is determined to keep “mowing the lawn”? Of course not. Iran is the one threatening to destroy Israel,, while Israel is defending its very existence. Israel has no choice but to keep going. And how many precision-guided missiles, how many military drones, how many R&D facilities in Syria does Iran possess and can afford to keep losing? What happens to Iranian facilities built deep underground in Syria if and when the Americans do the right thing— the reluctant Bidenites having been prodded by Congress — and provide Israel with 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs to do the job its current 500-pound bombs cannot?
For as long as It takes, with whatever weapons it has or can obtain, Israel will continue to engage in “mowing the lawn” in Syria.
mortimer says
Syria is one of the most archeology-rich areas in the world and because of Islamic terrorism, some of the oldest archeological sites in the world are being pounded by bombs into rubble. ISLAM IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS WANTON DESTRUCTION.
gravenimage says
This is true, Mortimer–but sadly pious Muslims care nothing for such “worthless Jahillya”.
James Lincoln says
Ah, yes gravenimage.
The “age of ignorance” was *prior to islam* according to islamic “scholars”.
Very Orwellian…
gravenimage says
Agreed, James–nothing is more ignorant than Islam.
mortimer says
There are sometimes military meetings between officers from Iran and NATO officers. The Western countries should reach out to these Iranian officers and assure them that NATO is willing to help them do it and then help them rebuild Iran if the military officers will go ahead and overthrow their illegitimate government which pretends to be a democracy, but is actually a single-party, fascist government. There have been revolutions that have been relatively peaceful in Rumania and Russia. It is conceivable that a military coup in Iran is possible,
The Iranian government is illegitimate because it gains its sovereignty from Shi’ite clericalism, rather than from the choice of the people. When the ice cream shop has only one flavor, that isn’t a ‘choice’.
Keith O says
I wonder how long it will take for Iran to tell Biden, to tell Israel to back off. Then of course, we all know what Israel’s response will be.
If the Mullah’s want Israel to stop using their military bases as training targets for the Israeli air force then all they have to do is stop giving or selling arms to terrorists like Hezbollah or Hamas.
Oh, wait, that’s that common sense thingy again.
James Lincoln says
Keith O,
If the so-called “Palestinians” and their supporters laid down their arms, there would be peace.
If the Israelis laid down their arms, Israel would be annihilated.
Why is that such a hard concept for the free world to understand?
Keith O says
James, You forgot to mention that with the annihilation of Israel, the mudslimes would then have to find a new enemy to be offended by, someone new to blame all their problems on, instead of each other.
James Lincoln says
Grimly true, Keith O.
gravenimage says
+1
gravenimage says
Iran Building Precision-Guided Missiles for Hezbollah
………………….
This does not surprise.
Yet Biden is still enabling the Mullahs and their nuclear program.
Del says
Biden wants to finance the missile production.
Walter Sieruk says
That “mullah regime ” of Iran with its stooge jihad entity Hezbollah are fated to fail in their jihad to destroy the State of Israel.
The reason that they will fail in the goal is because striving against the Will of God. The truth is the God had given all land that now composes the State of Israel, including all of the West Bank, to the Jewish people.
The truth is the God had given all land that now composes the State of Israel, including all of the West Bank, to the Jewish people. This may be found in the Bible, as seen in, for example, Genesis 28:13-15. 35:10-12. Deuteronomy 32:48,49. Psalm 105:7-11. 135:4.
In other words the Jews have all this land by Divine Right.
Furthermore, the Jewish people should have this land by historic rights as shown in First Kings 4:20,21, 24,25. 8:55, 56.
Still, in all fairness, there is one way for those in power in that tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran along with it’s Hezbollah jihadist to convince God to change His Mind about being so much for Israel and then cause Him to turn His back on Israel and then have that nation be no more.
That way is the heads ofthe”mullah tyranny and the jihadist chiefs of Hezbollah to gather together and then change the laws of astrophysics, including those laws of astrophysics the control the sun, the moon and the stars.
For God had declared in His Word, the Bible, in Jeremiah 31:35,36. “Thus saith the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day and the ordinances of the moon and stars for a light by night…The Lord of host is His name. If those ordinances depart from before Me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever.”