Israel launched air raids on Damascus last night, in apparent retaliation for an attack on a cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman it blamed on Syria’s ally Iran.
A volley of missiles targeted bases in the south of the Syrian capital said to be occupied by the Iran-backed militias playing a strong role in shoring up the regime of President Assad.
There was no comment from the government in Israel, though it had hinted there would be retaliation for an
attack on a cargo ship, the
Helios Ray, on Friday. Syrian state media claimed that air defences shot down “most” of the missiles.
The
Helios Ray, a car transporter, was flying a Bahamian flag when it was struck after leaving Saudi Arabia, but it is owned by an Israeli businessman. It was struck in four places, though there were no injuries and the vessel made it to port in Dubai for repairs.
Israel’s intelligence community was certain that Iran was behind the attack and on Sunday Lieutenant-General Aviv Kochavi, the chief of staff of the military, blamed Tehran in a speech to officers of the country’s main signals intelligence gathering unit.
“We have received a reminder from one of the greatest threats in the region, and a reminder that Iran is not just a nuclear threat, but that it spreads and carries out terror against civilian targets,” Kochavi said. He promised that Israel would respond to the attack.
This morning, the Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu hinted at Israeli responsibility for the raids in Syria, repeating accusations that Iran was to blame for the explosions on the
Helios Ray. “It is indeed an Iranian act, that’s clear,” he told the public broadcaster Kan. “Iran is Israel’s greatest enemy, I’m determined to block it, we’re striking at it throughout the region.”
While the government in Tehran has not made any official statement, the
Kayhan newspaper, which is close to the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote that the
Helios Ray may have been “trapped in an ambush by a branch of the resistance axis”. This refers to militias aligned with Iran, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel believes the ship was targeted as retribution for its clandestine operations against Iran, notably the
assassination of the head of Iran’s nuclear programme, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, on a road near Tehran in November. There have been several “low-level attacks” against Israeli targets, such as an explosion outside Israel’s embassy in the Indian capital Delhi that also did not cause any injuries.
A senior Israeli officer predicted last month that Iran would try to avoid a confrontation with Israel because it was waiting to see the Biden administration’s first moves, “but it is likely to try and carry out smaller, low-level attacks through its proxies in the region”.
This is despite the onslaught Israel has waged against Iranian and Iranian-backed forces inside Syria in the last five years, a series of hundreds of missile and air raids intended to stop the transfer of weapons to positions on its borders in that country and in Lebanon.
On Friday, the United States also
attacked Iranian-backed Iraqi Shia militias on the Syria-Iraq border. It said the raids were a response to rocket strikes on a US base in northern Iraq that killed two civilian contractors, which it blamed on the same militias.