(Bloomberg) -- The guns that brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have fallen silent, but jets and bomb blasts are convulsing the country as Israel, hoping to keep his orphaned arsenals out of rebel hands, conducts an unprecedented round of preemptive strikes.
More than 300 such sorties have been carried out since the weekend, the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said, in what Israeli military commentators described as the biggest operation ever mounted by their air force. The Israeli military declined to comment.
“All the military capabilities of the future Syrian army are being destroyed,” SOHR director Rami Abdulrahman told Arabiya TV.
A virtual ring of fire engulfed Damascus overnight with massive explosions sending up large flames all around the capital, live footage broadcast by Al-Jazeera news channel showed.
In the mountainous northern Qalamoun region next to Damascus, warplanes hit three Syrian army brigades which had ballistic missiles prepositioned for launches against Israel, one person familiar with the situation said, who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter.
Israeli missile boats destroyed Syrian naval craft and facilities on the Mediterranean coastline, according to Israel’s Army Radio, which didn’t say how it got the information.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has acknowledged, but not quantified, its latest campaign in a regional war that erupted on October 7, 2023 when Hamas fighters surged across the border from Gaza in a blaze of rockets. On the second front, against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Israelis found similar stockpiles of Soviet-designed materiel.
“We are determined not to allow a return to the October 6 situation, not on the Golan Heights nor anywhere else,” Defense Minister Israel Katz said, referring to the strategic plateau on the Syrian frontier.
More than a decade ago, the Israelis worried that their aircraft could be at risk from shoulder-launched missiles that flooded the black market from Libya after its leader, Moammar Al Qaddafi, was toppled.
The post-Assad crisis is far closer — within view of Golan villages — and has precipitated the collapse of a Russian-equipped Syrian military that, as recently as 2018, was rated the Middle East’s seventh-mightiest by Forbes magazine, albeit significantly weakened and propped up by Iran and Russia since 2011.
So as Syria’s rebels were rushing toward Damascus, the Israel Defense Forces carried out around 10 strikes on abandoned Assad army facilities, with a focus on chemical weapons sites, long-range missiles and advanced anti-aircraft systems, a person briefed on the operations said.
The pace spiraled dramatically after Assad fled on Saturday.
According to three people familiar with the situation in Syria who declined to be identified, Israel struck targets including the Mezzeh airbase in Damascus, several military sites in Daraa province, and a scientific research center in the Barzeh district of Damascus that oversaw development of biological and chemical arms as well as missile technologies.
In a nod to Assad’s espionage capabilities, the Israelis also bombed the Kafr Souseh security compound in central Damascus, destroying intelligence archives, two other people familiar with the situation said.
Israel has made little secret of distrusting the Islamist-led militants now ruling Syria.
“The only interest we have is the security of Israel and its citizens,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told reporters on Monday. “That’s why we attacked strategic weapons systems, like, for example. remnants of chemical weapons, or long-range missiles and rockets, in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists.”
While Israel’s main ally, the US, has separately been attacking Islamic State targets in eastern Syria, a Pentagon official said these sorties were steering clear of the Syrian army.
“The Biden administration is clearly keeping the US military out of this situation,” said Joe Buccino, a former spokesperson for US Central Command who now heads the consultancy Vantage + Vox. “While American forces are not involved in the destruction of Assad’s military equipment, there are contingency plans to hedge against terror groups gobbling up these system.”
Turkey
A senior US official, briefing reporters on Sunday, spoke of unidentified partners in the region that were tackling the issue. That may include Turkey, which backs some Syrian rebels and whose foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, told his US counterpart Antony Blinken on Saturday: “It would be beneficial to take necessary measures to prevent the chemical weapons owned by the regime from becoming a risk for the region.”
A senior Turkish official said Ankara’s military was “targeting” any Assad army weaponry seized by the YPG, a Syrian Kurdish rebel group that it regards as terrorists, but did not elaborate on the scale of such actions.
In parallel to the air strikes, Netanyahu has ordered the Israeli army to seize a buffer zone on the Syrian side of a 50-year-old armistice line from the countries’ last war. According to the SOHR, Israeli tanks have reached as far as the southwestern suburbs of Damascus, which the IDF denied.
Territorial depth, analysts say, will allow Israel to better spot attempted incursions and may also stave off any launches against it with short-range anti-tank missiles - a tactic favored by Hezbollah and Hamas, both of which are considered terrorist groups by the US and other governments.
--With assistance from Omar Tamo, Dana Khraiche, Nick Wadhams and Selcan Hacaoglu.
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