The first reports from Syria on Monday morning about the strike on the T4 air baseย in Homs blamed the U.S. It appeared that U.S. President Donald Trump intended to abide by his word and punish the beast Bashar Assad for using chemical weapons against his own people again.
Trump might have promised a few days prior to the attack that he would pull U.S. forces out of Syria but there is no contradiction between a precise, limited punitive action that would hurt but not topple the regime in Damascus and the strategic decision to withdraw from Syria and leave it to the Russians and the Iranians.
A few hours went by and it turned out that anyone who was waiting with baited breath for a Trump Twitter fit and then a volley of rockets on Syria would have to wait a little while longer.
It was Moscow that rushed to inform the world that Israel was responsible for the strike, followed by reports from Syria that said the strike had incurred Iranian wounded and casualties. The base that was targeted was used by the Iranians to launch drones into Israel's airspace and was apparently serving as one of Syria and Iran's forward posts. Tehran is keeping mum for now since the Iranians continue to deny that they have any intention of further entrenching themselves in Syria.
Officially, Israel had no comment, but in recent months, various spokespeople have warned that Iran gaining a foothold in Syria was a line that Israel was not willing to see crossed, one that could drag the entire region into conflict.
So we can surmise that Israel wants to draw clear lines in the sand, and โ unlike the Americans โ is determined to see that they are not crossed. In the past, the lines drawn in the game between Israel and the Syrian-Iranian-Hezbollah axis of evil entailed grandiose verbal attacks, Israeli air strikes, and retaliatory attacks by Hezbollah, although these were contained by both sides and did not engulf the region.
For years, Syria has refrained from responding to Israeli strikes in its territory, whereas Hezbollah always takes care to respond to every Israeli action tit for tat. If Iranians were killed in the Syria strike, we can assume that the Iranians will respond at some point, directly or indirectly.
The question is who will blink first and who will dictate the rules. In a reality in which the U.S. is abandoning Syria and Russian interests link the latter to Iran, it would be best if Israel quit while it was ahead of its neighbors to the north.
