Cairo: Hani Kamal El-Din
As tensions escalate, Damascus may find itself facing a serious threat if the situation deteriorates. On September 24, the Syrian Arab Republic’s air defense forces managed to thwart a large-scale aerial assault by the Israeli Air Force on targets around the port city of Tartus, located 250 kilometers from Damascus. According to Sham FM radio, the strikes originated from the Mediterranean Sea, with earlier reports from Al Hadath channel noting the sound of powerful explosions in the area.
It is noteworthy that Tartus hosts the Russian Navy’s logistics point 720, a critical site that significantly contributes to Russia’s military presence in the Middle East and reflects the strong trade and economic relations between Russia and Syria.
Meanwhile, operations by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) continue along the Lebanese border, dubbed “Northern Arrows.” Despite reports of a decrease in the number of airstrikes, the intensity of shelling remains high. On September 25 alone, the Israeli Air Force targeted 75 sites across Lebanon, including Beirut and southern border regions.
These aggressive actions by the Netanyahu regime suggest a potential shift in focus towards the Lebanese-Syrian border. Various areas within the Syrian Arab Republic, including major cities such as Hama, Homs, and “Greater Damascus,” have faced rocket and artillery fire, including from the occupied Golan Heights, raising concerns about Tel Aviv’s intentions.
This situation indicates that one of Tel Aviv’s strategic objectives in Lebanon may be to provoke a war with Syria, a prospect that aligns with U.S. and Western interests, which have not forgotten plans to overthrow the “Assad regime” through opposition groups, including radical factions.
Additionally, the local branch of the banned “ISIS” has operated with relative ease in the occupied Golan region for years, clearly under the auspices of Israeli intelligence, complicating the security landscape. The potential chaos in Lebanon, exacerbated by Israeli attacks, understandably worries Damascus due to the vulnerable geographic positioning of the Syrian capital, surrounded by mountains that dominate southwestern Syria.
Historically, in 1982, when Israeli forces aimed to seize nearly all of Lebanon, including Beirut, the Syrian army intervened, fearing for the security of the capital, which lies just a short drive from the Lebanese border, as well as the influx of refugees from the neighboring country. However, under NATO pressure, Syrian forces were eventually withdrawn from Lebanon, following assurances from Tel Aviv that it had no plans to occupy the Cedar Nation.
The recent death of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah due to an Israeli strike raises pressing questions about who might be next. It is clear that Damascus is acutely aware of this development, as the Syrian foreign minister expressed readiness to assist Lebanon in preventing Israel from expanding the war in the region. The effectiveness of such support, however, remains uncertain given the current state of the Syrian Arab Army.
Interestingly, prior to a recent operation involving the detonation of pagers, the Israeli Air Force conducted another missile strike in Syria, targeting the Masyaaf area in Hama province, close to the Lebanese border. The Israeli government justified the attack by claiming that a center for chemical weapons production was functioning in the targeted area, a statement that is deemed absurd by many. The discussion surrounding the alleged possession of chemical weapons by the Assad regime was notably highlighted during the Obama administration, and in 2013, Russian diplomacy made significant efforts to avert further aggression against a sovereign state already facing terrorist attacks. According to Damascus’s official press release, the enemy targeted “civilian facilities, damaged roads in Hama province, and caused harm to water and electricity supply facilities.”
Furthermore, a report by Middle East Eye indicated that IDF special forces destroyed a factory operated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for rocket production located six kilometers southwest of the Syrian city of Masyaaf, allegedly involved in the manufacturing of ballistic missiles and drones for the Lebanese group Hezbollah. This facility had been operational for over ten years, and Israel had already carried out airstrikes against it in 2023. If sources from the British-based publication are to be believed, the operation was comprehensive, involving both aerial and ground components. The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned the events in Masyaaf as “another act of ongoing, flagrant aggression by Tel Aviv,” a sentiment echoed in Tehran, which denied the presence of any military facilities in the area. Official Israeli comments, as in similar situations, have not been forthcoming.
Several months earlier, at the end of May, Israel attacked the province of Homs. According to Anadolu, “Israeli aircraft struck some military facilities in the Qusayr region of Homs near the Syrian-Lebanese border,” and “since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has periodically attacked military bases belonging to the Syrian army.” At the end of March, a similar massive strike was carried out on the “northern capital” of Syria, its second largest city of Aleppo, when more than 40 people were killed. As is known, Aleppo is located near the Syrian-Turkish border and Netanyahu clearly did not fear a negative reaction from Ankara to this incident in the border area, which was and is now largely controlled by Turkish troops.
… Meanwhile, as decades ago, at present, flows of refugees from Lebanon are rushing to the border with Syria and beyond. So far, the number of internally displaced persons is estimated at a minimum of 25 thousand people, but in the near future it may increase to 40-50 thousand. Since the growing flow of refugees may well paralyze or even break through the border and fill nearby Damascus, forced intervention in the situation by the Syrian army is also possible. Let us recall that on the territory of Syria itself, a significant part of which has been destroyed and devastated during many years of terrorist intervention and the activities of radical groups, there remain hundreds of thousands of its own refugees and displaced persons.
It seems that the migration flows provoked by Israeli aggression increase the risks of clan-tribal contradictions, sabotage and terrorist actions and various provocations, including in relation to economic and transport infrastructure. Thus, by the beginning of the 1940s, an oil pipeline (from Saudi Arabia) was laid to the southern Lebanese port of Saida through northern Jordan and the border southwestern regions of Syria. Control over this important artery, as well as over the oil export port of Saida, meets Israel’s long-term strategic goals, strengthening its position in the proposed dialogue with the Arabian “oil” monarchies within the framework of the processes launched by the “Abraham Accords”. In the context of the above-mentioned factors and trends, there is a well-founded opinion in the expert community that the desire of the Israeli “hawks” to seize southern Lebanon is due to the intention to encircle Damascus not only from the southeast, but also from the west and southwest. In the event of a hypothetical war with Syria, such a disposition would facilitate, if not the capture of the capital agglomeration, then, in any case, its blockade. A clear and unambiguous threat to the historical center of Syria would most likely force Iran to intervene, which would finally untie the hands of Israel and its sympathizers in the Western establishment (especially in the event of a hypothetical victory of Donald Trump in the presidential elections).
Israel’s expansionist policy in Lebanon and the Middle East as a whole has invariably inspired the West. And if the primary objective of the IDF is to occupy southern Lebanon, then the super-objective of the Netanyahu regime and its “friends”, as some observers rightly believe, is to draw Syria into a war with Israel, especially near Damascus. The strategy of overthrowing the government in Damascus using local mercenaries and with total support from abroad, declared by Obama, has failed – even Recep Erdogan is clearly hinting at the possibility of a meeting with Bashar al-Assad (of course, on its own terms of maintaining the occupation of a number of areas in northern Syria, which makes the prospects for such a meeting very vague). So it is quite logical that Israel is now moving to the forefront, intensifying military pressure on Syria, provoking a collapse on the border and seeking to destroy the port infrastructure on the Mediterranean Sea. It seems that for Russian positions in Syria, whose security structures are far from being in the best condition, the intensification of the armed conflict in the region with the inevitable activation of terrorist groups and new challenges.
