It's been edifying to see how quickly the international press has discovered that Syrian air defense systems are not quite so "formidable" as they were once described by senior Pentagon officials. It apparently takes a heavily-subsidized American client state to demonstrate via mushroom clouds the flaws in American strategic thinking now that leading from behind has become a happy conceptual partner to being led by the nose by forty years of Ba'athist propaganda about Syria's military might. But then, the Israelis have openly mocked Washington's failure to uphold its own "red lines" and they never tire of reminding their American patrons that when it comes to human intelligence and dealing with state actors in the Middle East, the heavy lifting is really best left to them.
In the hours between Thursday and Friday last week, the Israeli Air Force (IAF) struck a convoy of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles destined for Hezbollah that being warehoused near Damascus International Airport, as well as Russian-made Yakhont shore-to-sea cruise missiles. Then, between Saturday and Sunday, the IAF waged nine more air strikes on the Syrian capital, including on the Jamraya chemical research facility in north Damascus (a target it already struck in a similar raid last January), the Fourth Armored Division Headquarters in Mezzeh, southwest Damascus, and the Republican Guard's 104th Brigade in the Qasioun mountain region, which was engulfed in flames. Syria claims that more than 100 of its soldiers were killed by these attacks, and many more injured. (The Fourth Armored Division and Republican Guard are Assad's praetorian divisions, without which his conventional military would virtually cease to exist.)
According to press accounts, both Israeli sorties, as well the earlier one waged in January, occurred without the IAF ever penetrating Syrian airspace; it used stand-off missile systems from the skies above Lebanon. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was so unbothered by the threat of retaliation from powdering some of Bashar al-Assad's impregnable fortresses that he didn't even cancel a scheduled trip to China. Israelis then indicated that this isn't the last time they intend to pay call on Damascus. Assad, meanwhile, retaliated against the Zionist aggressor by bombing more of his own people.
Michael Ross, an ex-Mossad officer, told me that the key to Israel's in-and-out operations is its advanced electronic warfare system, which was constructed by Unit 8200 ("Israel's NSA") and is an advanced form of the "Suter" network that blinded Syrian radars during the IAF's 2007 attack on Syria's nuclear facility at al-Kibar. "The software identifies emitters and entry into enemy communications networks," Ross said. "Then it shuts down some or all enemy emitters or injects misleading information or even malware. To control the skies, you must first control the electromagnetic spectrum. This is now IAF doctrine." Ross also said that the Fateh-110 missiles had been delivered by Iran no more than a week before they were destroyed, which indicates that either the Islamic Republic is remarkably lax with its shipping manifests or that Israeli assets come and go in Syria like I do my own living room.
The last few days have seen a grit-teeth conversation among Syrian dissidents about what to make of Israel objectively aiding their cause. They needn't disturb their consciences overmuch because the IAF looks right past them and doesn't even see Syria as an independent country anymore, only an emerging Iranian suzerainty in the Levant. Dr. Shimon Shapira, a retired brigadier general of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), has written a paper unambiguously titled "Iran's Plans to Take Over Syria," which emphasizes comments made by Mehdi Taaib, the head of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's think tank, that Syria is "35th district of Iran," tantamount to Khuzestan, the Arab-populated district of Iran. The architect of this grand strategy is Major General Qasem Suleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp-Quds Force, who, in an ambitious operation named for himself, has begun the training and financing of 150,000-strong sectarian militia in Syria known as Jaysh al Sha'bi, drawn from fighters from Iran, Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraq, and even the Gulf states. This Basiji-style irregular army, as well as older Syrian formations such as the minorities-staffed Popular Committees and the shabiha (both of which also receive the mullahs' largesse), stand to inherit the responsibilities of the Syrian Army, and further Iranian interest, in the event of regime collapse.
Lest anyone think that these claims amount to Israel overstating its own security threat, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has put out a new study about the Persian bulwark keeping Assad alive which legitimates and expands on Shapira's analysis. ISW also suggests that a major imperative for grounding Syrian aircraft or destroying the Air Force's infrastructure is to halt to the uninterrupted supply-line of personnel and materiel from Tehran.
