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Israel raids Syrian air base
When the Syrian Arab Air Force T4 air base at Tiyas (near the city of Homs) came under attack before dawn on 9 April, Syria’s state TV immediately accused the United States of carrying out the attack. It was initially assumed that it had been mounted in retaliation for the widely reported chemical weapons attack two days earlier in Douma in the Eastern Ghouta region, the last rebel-held enclave in the vicinity of Damascus.
This was perhaps understandable. After a chemical weapons attack on the rebel-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in April 2017, the US fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at a Syrian military air base at Shayrat, which had been used to launch that attack.
Even on the day of the attack against Tiyas, after US and French denials of responsibility, Syria and Russia were soon blaming Israel for the attack. Rather than being a US response to the alleged chemical weapons attack, the air raid was thus part of a wider Israeli effort to counter and contain the Iranian military build-up in Syria. It was not even the first IDF/AF attack against the air base at Tiyas, which has been a particular irritant to Israel.
Israeli sources have said that Tiyas air base incorporates an Iranian military/Revolutionary Guard/Quds facility, and have alleged that the base has been used by Iranian forces to transfer advanced weapons to its Lebanese ally, the Shia militant group Hezbollah.
Tiyas is also believed to have been the launch site for the Iranian drone that made an incursion into Israel in the early hours of 10 February, prompting an IDF/AF attack on what was described as the “command-and-control centre from which Iran had launched the drone, at a Syrian air base near Palmyra.” An Israeli F-16I Sufa was shot down by heavy Syrian anti-aircraft fire, crashing in Northern Israel en route back to its base. Both crew ejected safely.
This was said to be the first Israeli combat aircraft lost to hostile fire in decades.
The weapons used during this attack (and a succession of follow up attacks) were said to have been Israel Military Industries (IMI) Delilah loitering air-launched cruise missiles, launched by Israel Defence Force/Air Force F-16I Sufa and F-15I Ra’am tactical fighters. These 412-lb weapons have a 66-lb warhead and a 160 nautical mile range, compared to the heavier but shorter-ranged Rafael Popeye.
Initial reports suggested that about 20 missiles landed in and around T4, hitting and damaging the ‘maintenance section’ and other areas, destroying a number of drones and causing casualties among Syrian air force and Iranian personnel. It was claimed that the Syrian defences had shot down eight missiles (out of 20 or 28 fired).
Subsequently, estimates as to the size of the raid were scaled back. The Russian Defence Ministry said that two Israeli F-15s had carried out a guided missile air strike on Tiyas air base, launching eight missiles from Lebanese air space in the early hours of Monday, 9 April. Moscow and Damascus claimed that Syrian defences had shot down five of the eight missiles fired, the remaining three hitting the western part of the base – which is understood to be the Iranian enclave.
14 people were killed in the attack, and the Iranian Tasnim news agency said that seven Iranian military personnel had been killed. The Fars news agency said that three of the dead had been members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, though this report was subsequently withdrawn without explanation.
Less than a week later, the US, UK and France mounted co-ordinated air strikes against Syrian targets in direct retaliation for the attack on Douma.