Russian President Vladimir Putin can expect Israel to attack his Iranian partners anywhere they operate in Syria, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday.
“First of all, Iran has to withdraw from all of Syria,” Netanyahu told his Cabinet while recounting his most recent conversation with the Russian leader.
Russia and Iran have partnered to secure Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s regime in the face of a civil war involving a shifting array of U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters, jihadists affiliated with al Qaeda, and the Islamic State. Iranian forces and Iran-controlled terrorist militias have provided crucial ground support for Assad, but Netanyahu has carried out major airstrikes to limit Iran’s long-term ability to project power in Syria, which neighbors Israel.
“Second, we will take action — and are already taking action — against efforts to establish a military presence by Iran and its proxies in Syria both close to the border and deep inside Syria,” Netanyahu said Sunday.
Russia has pushed for Iran to withdraw from southern Syria, the region closest to Israel’s border, while accepting that Iranian forces would operate elsewhere in the country. “The result of this work, which should continue and is continuing, should be a situation when representatives of the Syrian Arab Republic’s army stand at Syria’s border with Israel,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in May.
If Iranian forces left southern Syria to fight in another region, that might free up more Assad forces for such an offensive in the southwest. A move by Assad’s forces into southern Syria would violate a regional cease-fire that Putin and President Trump agreed to implement during a meeting in July 2017.
“We affirm again that the United States will take firm and appropriate measures in response to Syrian government violations in this area,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert warned last week. “Existing diplomatic channels have successfully monitored and de-escalated the situation in the southwest, avoiding any resumption of fighting for nearly a year. The cease-fire must continue to be enforced and respected.”
In any case, Netayahu — who already has authorized aggressive airstrikes against pro-Iranian forces in response to rocket attacks and a violation of Israeli airspace by an Iranian drone — won’t accept Lavrov’s preference for a limited withdrawal. That’s because Iranian forces in any part of Syria would still be positioned to threaten Israel.
“When you consider the advanced weapon systems — surface-to-surface missiles and anti-aircraft systems — that the Iranians want to deploy in Syria, it becomes clear that they must be prevented from doing so in all of Syria and not only within a limited distance from the Israeli border,” Chagai Tzuriel, director-general of the intelligence ministry, told Reuters in May.
As Netanyahu concluded Sunday: “We will act against these efforts anywhere in Syria.”
