Against the backdrop of the strategic shifts in the region, Iran and Israel have continued with their tit-for-tat. The former is trying to arm its proxies with sophisticated weapon systems; the latter is trying to frustrate that effort.
Video: Reuters / Iran accuses US Navy of defending fuel smuggling in Gulf incident
The air strike on Monday night that was attributed to the Israeli air force in eastern Syria was the direct continuation of this process. It appears that this attack targeted an Iranian attempt to smuggle advanced weaponry into Syria, and Israel reportedly took out the convoy. In the past, such convoys included components for the manufacture of precision-guided munition and various other air and naval defense components. One can assume that this was the case this time as well.
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Israel has been fully invested in trying to identify the paths used by the convoys and to attack them in order to make it hard for Iran. Israel reportedly carried out 32 attacks in Syria in 2022, and since early 2023 it has already struck 25 times in the country – at the very least. Until several months ago, Iran used aerial routes as their main modus operandi for such arms shipments; in some cases, this was carried out using military planes, but usually, commercial flights were exploited by the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards to clandestinely transport such weapons through dissimulation as civilian cargo or even as part of the humanitarian relief to Turkey in the wake of the February earthquake there.
In response, Israel has carried out a series of attacks on various Syrian airfields, taking them out of commission. This was meant to signal to the Syrian regime that Iranian activity on its soil comes with a price. Iran would later reduce its aerial activity and began shifting the shipment operation through the overland route, which begins in Iran, goes through Iraq, and then to Syria. The attack on Syria this week was aimed at this modus operandi, and it required pinpointed intelligence and a high level of combatworthiness by the Israeli Air Force.
The Iranian-Israeli clash stands out in the wake of the dramatic events in the region, chiefly among them is the effort to strike a normalization deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and later on with various other Muslim-Sunni states. Iran is trying to torpedo this process and has even publicly warned Saudi Arabia not to "gamble on a losing horse" because Israel's demise is near. Riyadh is unlikely to heed that demand, for its own reasons. Despite the thaw in relations between the kingdom and the Islamic Republic – including through the exchange of ambassadors – the Saudis remain very suspicious of the Iranians. A strategic manifestation of that is that Riyadh is trying to forge a defense pact with the US; a tactical manifestation took place this week when Saudi soccer players refused to play a match in Iran because of a bust of former IRGC Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
Of course, Israel is trying to bring Saudi Arabia into its orbit and to create a strong common front against Iran. The attack in Syria is ostensibly unrelated to the normalization process and is meant to prevent the terrorists on Israel's northern border from laying their hands on sophisticated arms, but it nevertheless serves as a clear reminder for Riyadh that it must not scale back its fight against the constant danger posed by Iran.
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