An Israeli satellite imagery company released photographs in recent days showing what it described as "Iran's land bridge from Tehran to the Mediterranean."
The images show Iranian construction work on a new crossing on the Syrian-Iraqi border, which, according to ImageSat International, would allow Iran to transfer weapons, armed personnel and oil into Syria.
The images are from an area that has been in the headlines in the past. An older border crossing in the same area, known as Albukamal, was destroyed in airstrikes attributed to Israel by international media reports a little over a year ago.
The 2018 strikes were unusual not only because they demolished an Iranian-run border crossing, but also because they destroyed a building that served as a headquarters for Iranian-backed Shiite Iraqi militias, exactly the kind of forces Iran wants to inject into Syria, along with weapons and oil, to bypass U.S. sanctions.
According to reports from last year, dozens of Iraqi militia operatives, most of whom were members of an organization called "Hezbollah Battalions," were killed in the attack.
Now it seems Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps is building a new land corridor in the very same area. The satellite imagery can be interpreted as an Israeli warning to Iran to cease its activities or face additional strikes.
This state of affairs reflects the fact that Iran remains committed to its long-term objective of turning Syria into an Iranian military zone and a future base to attack Israel.
Iran has been involved in a stubborn and patient effort to turn Syria into a base of operations. But it has run into a brick wall, in the form of an even more determined Israeli effort to disrupt this threatening process.
Hundreds of Israeli airstrikes in the past few years alone have put a major dent in Iran's plans, destroying missile bases, weapons production sites, military bases and weapons' transfer stations. This mission to prevent Iran from taking over Syria has become a top objective for the Israeli Air Force. The campaign, known as the "War Between Wars," is ongoing, and requires 24/7 intelligence gathering, precision strikes and calculated risks.
But the latest satellite imagery suggests that Iran's leadership is far from giving up. Iran has two central objectives in Syria: to turn the country into an Iranian-controlled war machine against Israel and use it to traffic weapons to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Despite being under major economic pressure from the U.S. and contending with bruising Israeli strikes on its assets in Syria, the Iranians are not walking away. They are merely tweaking the "volume" of their activities, turning the dial up and down in line with conditions, but never switching their Syria project off.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the IRGC remain committed to building capabilities in Syria so that they can fire missiles and rockets at Israel, create terrorist cells and send armed formations to the Syrian-Israeli border. Tehran wants to create a "second Lebanon" inside Syrian territory.
In order to achieve that aim, its leaders cannot rely on cargo flights to deliver weapons and fighters alone. Those flights are under close Israeli surveillance. Repeated strikes on Iran's weapons depots at Damascus International Airport are proof of that. Iran, in response, reportedly moved its air-smuggling operations earlier this year to the T-4 Syrian air-force base in the central Syrian Desert. But that base is also vulnerable to reported Israeli strikes, as demonstrated by a July 2018 attack.
A land corridor would enable Iran to keep building its bases in Syria, nurture Hezbollah and expand its destabilizing influence.
The question then is why does Israel appear to have chosen to warn Iran to stop building the crossing via media reports that show that Israeli intelligence is on to Iran's activities, rather than directly striking it?
One reason seems to be the effectiveness of "information campaigns," meaning the use of intelligence to disrupt enemy activity via media warnings, as a complementary tactic alongside actual airstrikes.
This provides Israel with some flexibility, allowing it to try and diffuse a threatening situation without the associated risk of strikes that have the potential to snowball into larger conflicts.
Israel may have opted for this tactic due to rising American-Iranian tensions in the Persian Gulf. Israel may wish to lower its profile during this time to see how the tensions play out and avoid taking action that can further inflame the region.
As the White House mobilizes additional troops in the region, as well as naval ships and missile defenses, Israel appears to be turning down the volume on its own pre-emptive strikes in Syria. But only up to a point.
This month alone, media outlets report that Israel conducted a missile strike on a target south of Damascus. In April, Israel reportedly struck a major Iranian weapons' facility in the northwestern Syrian city of Masyaf.
Such strikes presumably occur in response to urgent and critical intelligence of threatening Iranian activities, which, if left, unchecked, would expose Israel to the risk of guided missile attacks from Syria.
Another risk stems from Syrian President Bashar Assad's repeated and reckless attempt to attack Israeli Air Force aircraft. In the latest such incident, which occurred on Monday, a Syrian anti-aircraft system fired on IAF jets that were on a routine flight in northern Israeli airspace. In response, the IDF struck the launcher, reportedly killing one Syrian soldier and injuring another.
The Assad regime's policy of firing on Israeli jets puts Syria at risk of being dragging into any future Israeli-Iranian escalation.
This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
