As hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah continue to escalate, Israel has increased strikes on supply lines and other targets in Syria that Iran uses to arm Hezbollah.
Israel has intensified covert strikes in Syria against weapons sites, supply routes and Iranian-linked commanders, seven regional officials and diplomats said, ahead of a threatened full-scale assault on Tehran's key ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. A June 2 air raid that killed 18 people, including an adviser with Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, targeted a clandestine, fortified weapons site near Aleppo, three of the sources said.
Israel has since killed dozens of Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah officers in Syria, from just two last year before the Oct. 7 attack, according to a tally by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank. The battle hit fever pitch in April when Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing the top IRGC commander for operations in the Levant. In retaliation, Iran fired some 300 missiles and drones at Israel, almost all of which were shot down.
Syria, a longtime Iranian ally, became the key conduit for Tehran's arms supplies to Hezbollah after Iran deployed military personnel and thousands of allied paramilitaries from around 2013 to help President Bashar al-Assad during his country's ongoing civil war. Some weapons parts are smuggled into Syria while others are assembled there, the three Syrian officials said.
The number of Israeli attacks in Syria jumped dramatically after Oct. 7, when Israel and Hamas went to war. 'The frequency has doubled,' said the Washington Institute's Uysal. Israel carried out 50 air strikes in Syria in the six months after the Gaza war began, she said. 'These included attacks on Aleppo airport, the Nairab military airport, Damascus airport, and the Mezzeh military airport, which are key in weapon transfers. Weapons caches were also among the targets.
Hezbollah official Nawaf Musawi told the Iran-aligned Al Mayadeen TV channel in March that the group was opening new ammunition depots 'and getting more precision missiles and better quality weapons by land, sea and air.' Farzan Sabet, a senior researcher at the Geneva Graduate Institute who specializes in Iranian foreign policy, said attacks on Israel by Hezbollah and Iran's allies in Iraq and Yemen during the Gaza war had taken a toll on Israel.
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