Israel raised the stakes in its regional rivalry with Iran over the weekend by carrying out a flurry of attacks against its forces and their proxies in three different countries.
Israeli drones and aircraft struck a number of Iran-allied militia groups in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon over the course of 48 hours, in an escalation which has raised fears of a wider conflict.
The Israeli military has been carrying out airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria for some time in an effort to curtail its regional footprint, but it now appears to have widened the theatre of operations for its air campaign to include Iraq and Lebanon, at least temporarily.
The first of the weekend’s strikes came on Saturday when Israel targeted Iranian forces near Damascus. An Israeli military spokesman said the strikes had thwarted an attempt by Iran to launch “killer drones” into Israel.
“The strike targeted Iranian Quds Force operatives and Shiite militias which were preparing to advance attack plans targeting sites in Israel from within Syria over the last number of days,” the military said in a statement, referring to the overseas arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on Twitter after the attack: “Iran has no immunity anywhere. Our forces operate in every sector against the Iranian aggression. If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first.”
Two members of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and one Iranian were killed in the Israeli strikes around Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor. Iran denied its forces had been hit.
Iran and Hezbollah are deeply involved in Syria’s civil war, and have sent thousands of fighters throughout the conflict to keep President Bashar al-Assad in power. In an effort to counter Iran’s rising regional influence, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against both in the country. Much of those attacks have been aimed at preventing Iran delivering weapons to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a deadly war in 2006 that left more than 1,000 Lebanese civilians dead and much of the country’s infrastructure destroyed. Since then, Israeli attacks on Hezbollah have largely been confined to Syria.
But that changed in the early hours of Sunday morning when two Israeli drones crashed in what appeared to be an attempted attack on Hezbollah’s media office in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
Hezbollah spokesman Mohammed Afif said a small, unmanned reconnaissance drone fell on a building housing the group’s media office in the Moawwad neighbourhood in Dahiyeh.
The Independent
Comments About This Article
Please fill the fields below.