An increase in strikes on Iranian targets in Syria attributed to Israel, the coronavirus pandemic, and the targeted killing of former Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a US strike last November has prompted Iran to start pulling up stakes in Syria, Israeli defense officials believe.
At a meeting at the Kirya IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, defense officials revealed that "Tehran is cutting back its forces in Syria and removing military bases for the first time since it [Iran] went into Syria as part of the Syrian civil war."
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The officials said that Iran's presence in Syria was becoming a burden rather than an asset.
"Damascus is paying an increasingly high price for Iran's presence in its territory, for a war that isn't its own," sources in the defense establishment said, adding that Israel would "step up pressure on Iran until it leaves Syria."
The meeting at the Kirya took place hours after a major strike in Syrian territory overnight Monday, which was attributed to Israel. This was the sixth such strike in the past month and targeted a site near Aleppo in northeast Syria. The strike targeted a military-industrial site designed to manufacture advanced weaponry, missiles, and perform precision upgrades on existing missiles and rockets -- all part of the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah "precision project."
Some of the foreign reports about the strike claimed that Iranian officials were killed, although no official confirmation has been forthcoming from the Iranian government. The Syrian Human Rights Observatory watchdog reported Tuesday morning that the strike had killed 14 members of pro-Iranian Shiite militias.
Experts in Israel think that Iran's presence in Syria is costing Damascus too much, both in terms of casualties and resources. The strikes are generally carried out deep inside Syrian territory and target Iranian infrastructure as well as Iranian command centers, in addition to thwarting weapons smuggling convoys.
Israel has also identified in the past six months a significant drop in the number of cargo flights used to smuggle weapons from Iran into Syria. Iran has evacuated some of its bases in Syria and cut back on the number of members of its elite Quds Force who are deployed there. At the height of the Syrian war, five years ago, Tehran sent thousands of combatants and advisors to Syria to help Syrian President Bashar Assad fight the Islamic State and the Syrian rebels, but as the war waned, the Iranians stayed in Syria to set up thousands of rocket launchers and other weapons that they trained on Israel.
Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who is slated to hand the reins over to Blue and White leader Benny Gantz next week, warned Tuesday that "Iranian soldiers who enter Syria and are active there will pay for it with their lives."
Meanwhile, Reuters on Tuesday quoted a "regional intelligence official" who claimed that Israel had increased its activity in Syria while the world was focused on dealing with the corona pandemic.
The intelligence officials claimed that the stepped-up Israeli strikes were part of a shadow war being waged with US backing, without escalating into a full-blown conflict.
In a related development, Israel's ImageSat International has published a satellite photo of a building in the Syrian city Homs that was attacked on May 1. Foreign reports attributed the airstrike to the Israeli Air Force. The structure, which was used to store vehicles, was completed obliterated.
