Israel has warned Syrian President Bashar Assad that it would include one of his palaces in its counter-Iran target bank if he continues to allow Tehran to transfer "quality weapons" to Syria and Hezbollah, Arab news website Elaph reported Tuesday.
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The London-based outlet's report cited an unnamed senior Israeli source as saying that such a strike could be part of the deep raids the IDF is gearing up for to counter the Iranian presence in Syria.
Elaph's report came several hours after websites affiliated with the Syrian opposition claimed that a large explosion rocked the city of Bukamal, in the Deir ez-Zor area of eastern Syria, near the border with Iraq, on Monday night.
According to the reports. Unidentified fighter jets targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions in Bukamal. Syrian state media made no mention of the incident.
If the area was indeed bombed, the strike comes on the heels of two strikes on Damascus International Airport that took place last week, and which Arab media attributed to Israel.
Syria's Transport Ministry confirmed that the airport suffered major damage in the strikes, including to runways, forcing it to shut down.
Several weeks ago, intelligence was made public showing that a Hezbollah official was using civilian flights from Tehran to Damascus to smuggle weapons to its forces in Syria as well as to the Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist group, which is Iran's largest proxy in the Middle East.
Israel has made it clear it would not tolerate Iranian military presence on its borders. The IDF has carried out hundreds of strikes against Iranian assets in Syria – Israel's neighbor to the north – as part of the government's declared policy of preventing Iran from entrenching itself militarily in the war-torn country.
Elaph further noted that Russia, which stepped into the Syrian fray in late 2015 to save the Assad regime from collapse, had denounced the strike on the airport.
Moscow and Jerusalem set up a coordination mechanism once the Kremlin sent forces to Syria, to avoid any unintentional clash between their forces. However, according to the report, Israel began preparing for operations deep inside Syria without informing Russia, and the latter has been growing increasingly impatient with them – to the point of allegedly threatening to "change the rules of the game" in Syria.
The coordination mechanism set up between Russia and Israel has faltered since Prime Minister Naftali Bennett came to power in 2021, the report continued, and the Russians are now allowing pro-Iranian forces to move more freely toward southern Syria – contrary to the understanding previously reached between Jerusalem and Moscow.
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