WarSclerotic

Amid fears of escalation, hours after Israeli airstrikes destroyed Iranian installations and reportedly killed military personnel in Syria, Iran’s air force chief said Monday morning the country’s military was ready to fight a war for “Israel’s disappearance.”

“We’re ready for the decisive war that will bring about Israel’s disappearance. Our armed forces are prepared for the day when Israel will be destroyed,” Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh said, according to an Iranian news site.

A former fighter pilot, Nasirzadeh was named Iran’s air chief by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in August after serving as the acting commander for several months.

Israeli fighter jets targeted Iranian weapons storehouses, intelligence facilities and a training camp near Damascus during the massive overnight bombardment, the Israel Defense Forces said earlier in the morning, accusing Iran of firing a missile at the Hermon ski resort a day earlier.

The head of the Iranian Air Force, Brig. Gen. Aziz Nasirzadeh, in an undated photograph. (Iranian Air Force)

In addition, the Israeli Air Force bombed a number of Syrian air defense systems that fired on the attacking fighter jets, the military said.

“During the attack, dozens of Syrian surface-to-air missiles were fired, despite the clear warnings expressed [by Israel] to refrain from attacking. As a result, a number of Syrian air defense batteries were also attacked,” the IDF said in a statement.

According to Russia, four Syrian servicemen were killed in those strikes. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least seven other people were killed in the Israeli raid, likely Iranian and pro-Iranian troops.

The missile fired on the Hermon, which was intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome system, appeared to come in retaliation for an alleged Israeli strike earlier Sunday against targets in the Damascus International Airport and in the town of al-Kiswah, south of the capital.

But IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis said Monday that the rocket attack had been planned months in advance.

“The Iranian [rocket] launch took place after very lengthy preparations and a decision-making process that concluded months ago,” Manelis said in a statement.

Israelis ski and snowboard on Mount Hermon on January 11, 2019. (Basel Awidat/Flash90)

The rocket was launched “by an Iranian force from the Damascus area, from inside territory that [the Syrian government] promised would not host an Iranian presence,” he charged.

“Syria is paying a heavy price for its approval of the [rocket] operation, and the fire yesterday toward the northern Golan,” Manelis added. “The Syrians had prepared for the operation, which was planned beforehand. The attack was an Iranian attempt to strike at Israel.”

In response to the Iranian missile attack, according to the IDF, jets bombed weapons warehouses, including at least one at the Damascus airport, an intelligence facility and a training camp, all belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Israel and the West accuse of trying to gain a military foothold in Syria.

All of the targets, including the Syrian air defense batteries, were located around Damascus, according to the IDF.

“The Iranian attack on Israeli territory yesterday was more clear proof of the purpose of Iran’s efforts to entrench itself in Syria, and the danger this poses to the State of Israel and regional stability,” the army said in a statement Monday.

Israel has long accused Iran of seeking to establish a military presence in Syria that could threaten Israeli security, and attempting to transfer advanced weaponry to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.

Germany plans to ban Iranian airline Mahan Air from its airports, media reported Monday, in an escalation of sanctions adopted by the European Union against Iran over attacks on opponents in the bloc.

“The Federal Aviation Office (LBA) will this week suspend the operating license of Iranian airline Mahan,” reported Munich-based daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry in Berlin told the paper it “does not inform about internal political decision-making processes.”

Mahan, Iran’s second-largest carrier after Iran Air, operates four flights a week between Tehran and the German cities Duesseldorf and Munich. It has been identified by Israeli defense officials as one of the cargo carriers suspected of ferrying war materiel from Iran to its proxy militias in Syria. As a result, it is subject to sanctions by the US Treasury Department.

A Mahan Air flight was en route to Syria on Sunday afternoon but turned back following reported Israeli strikes in and around the Syrian capital Damascus, according to flight data. The airline makes almost daily flights between Iran and Syria.

The EU earlier this month targeted sanctions at Iran’s security services and two of their leaders, accused of involvement in a series of murders and planned attacks against Tehran critics in the Netherlands, Denmark and France.

Brussels’ measures included freezing funds and financial assets belonging to Iran’s intelligence ministry and individual officials, but did not target any companies.

By contrast Mahan Air was blacklisted by the US in 2011, as Washington said the carrier was providing technical and material support to an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards known as the Quds Force.

The US treasury has threatened sanctions against countries and companies offering the airline’s 31 aircraft landing rights or services such as on-board dining.

German firms have come under especially intense pressure from American Ambassador Richard Grenell, a close ally of US President Donald Trump, over sanctions against Iran.

Rail operator Deutsche Bahn, Deutsche Telekom, Mercedes-Benz parent Daimler and industrial group Siemens have all said they will stop their operations in the country.

Last week German authorities said they had arrested a German-Afghan military adviser on suspicion of spying for Iran.

The Israel Defense Forces on Monday said the missile that was intercepted over the Hermon ski resort the previous day was launched by Iran in a “premeditated” attack aimed at deterring Israel from conducting airstrikes against the Islamic Republic’s troops and proxies in Syria.

According to the Israeli military, the missile was an Iranian-made medium-range model that was fired from the outskirts of Damascus at approximately three in the afternoon. Conflicting reports emerged about the intended target of the missile, with some politicians claiming it was the Hermon ski resort and the IDF saying it could have been heading to either a civilian or a military area.

The attack came shortly after the IDF allegedly conducted a number of rare daylight airstrikes nearby.

In response to the missile attack from Syria, which was intercepted before it breached Israeli airspace, the Israeli military launched three waves of airstrikes that targeted first Iranian sites in and around Damascus, and then Syrian air defense batteries, which had fired on the Israeli fighter jets that had attacked earlier, the IDF said.

Israeli troops on Monday remained on high alert in the north. The Hermon ski resort was closed to visitors, but no other special safety instructions were given to residents of the area.

Trails left by the Iron Dome air defense system intercepting a Syrian projectile over Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights, on January 20, 2019. (Israel Defense Forces)

Military spokesperson Jonathan Conricus said the three response sorties destroyed a number of Iranian intelligence sites, training bases and weapons caches, including one of the Islamic Republic’s largest depots near the Damascus International Airport, which triggered secondary explosions.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported that 11 pro-regime fighters were killed in the Israeli raids. Of those, according to Russia, at least four were Syrian military personnel, apparently killed in the strikes on the country’s air defenses.

On Monday morning, the IDF released video footage of its airstrikes on Syrian air defenses, including on social media.

“We understand that the Iranians are trying to change the context and deter us from our policy and our strategy of fighting Iranian troops in Syria,” Conricus said. “They thought they could change the rules of engagement. Our response was a rather clear one, with a message to Iran and Syria that our policies have not changed.”

He acknowledged that while the military believed it was planned in advance, the trigger for Sunday’s attack was likely the airstrikes reported moments before.

Israeli defense analysts attributed both Sunday’s alleged daylight airstrike and the large magnitude of the overnight bombings to an attempt by incoming IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi, whose tenure began last week, to demonstrate his willingness to use force against Iran in Syria.

For years, Israel has maintained a policy of actively opposing Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, as well as attempts by the Islamic Republic to supply terrorist groups like Hezbollah with advanced weaponry. As a result, the IDF has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria — generally late at night — in order to prevent violations of its “red lines.”

Initially, Israel refused to acknowledge those raids, but politicians and defense officials have been increasingly vocal about the activity in recent months.

Typically, such Israeli airstrikes pass without a retaliation by Iran, with the exception of a rocket barrage in May 2018 and an attempted drone attack in February 2018. Syria regularly fires anti-aircraft missiles at the attacking Israeli fighter jets, including in February, when it successfully shot down an F-16 aircraft.

The spokesman disputed reports that the projectile had been fired by pro-Iranian militias or by the Syrian regime.

According to the spokesman, the mid-range missile, which traveled dozens of kilometers before being shot down by an Iron Dome missile defense battery, was launched “by Iranian troops, not by proxies, not by Shiite militias, not by Syrian troops, but Iranian troops with an Iranian missile.”

Conricus said the location from which the missile was fired was “an area that we have been promised that the Iranians would not be in.”

That assurance appeared to have been made by Russia — Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s prime ally in the civil war — but Conricus said he “won’t go into who made the promise.”

Israel has reached a number of understandings with Russia about the permitted location of Iranian troops in Syria, mostly about their deployment along the Golan border with Syria.

The IDF spokesperson said the military ultimately holds Syria responsible for the attack and warned that the country would “pay the price” for allowing Iran to establish a permanent military presence in its territory. Iran officially denies having troops in Syria beyond a small number of advisers — a claim that is widely disregarded among Western intelligence officials.

An explosion, reportedly during Israeli airstrikes near Damascus, Syria, on January 21, 2019. (screen capture: YouTube)

According to Conricus, the three Israeli Air Force response sorties targeted sites connected to the Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The IDF refused to designate the specific number of locations bombed in the strikes.

According to Conricus, one of the targets of the raids was “the main storage hub for Quds Force.”

He said Iran had been bringing weapons into that facility near the airport over the past two weeks in order to distribute them to the Hezbollah terrorist army and other pro-Iranian Shiite militias in Syria.

Sunday’s alleged daytime strike came hours after a Syrian cargo plane touched down in the Damascus International Airport from Tehran, according to publicly available flight data.

Israeli and American defense officials have said ostensibly civilian planes are often used to transport advanced weaponry from Tehran to pro-Iranian militias fighting in Syria, including Hezbollah.

Another flight from Iran, flown by Tehran’s Mahan Air carrier, was en route to Syria on Sunday afternoon, but turned back following the reported Israeli strikes, according to flight data. Mahan Air has been identified by defense officials as one of the cargo carriers suspected of ferrying war materiel from Iran to Syria. As a result, it is subject to sanctions by the US Treasury Department.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

Israel’s early-morning raids on Monday against Iranian installations in Syria demonstrated that Jerusalem’s “red-line policy to prevent Iranian entrenchment in Syria is being upheld with full force,” a senior Israeli minister said Monday morning.

“The IDF attack tonight against Iranian Quds Force targets are a clear message to [Quds Force commander] Qassem Souleimani and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard,” Transportation and Intelligence Minister Israel Katz said in a statement.

Katz’s comments followed an apparently massive Israeli air bombardment of Iranian weapons storehouses, intelligence facilities and a training camp near Damascus in the early hours of Monday, a strike that the Israel Defense Forces, in a rare move, publicly announced a few hours later.

The army said the airstrikes were in response to a surface-to-surface missile fired at the Golan Heights a day earlier, which was intercepted by an Iron Dome anti-missile battery.

Israeli jets attacked Iranian weapons storehouses, intelligence facilities and a training camp near Damascus during a massive overnight bombardment, the Israel Defense Forces said, accusing Iran of firing a missile at Israel a day earlier.

Quoting a dictum of the Talmudic sages — “He who comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first” — Katz said “anyone who fires a rocket at the Israeli Hermon will pay a high price.”

He told Army Radio in an interview Monday morning that the rocket attack targeted the ski resort on the Hermon.

According to the IDF, Israeli jets bombed weapons warehouses, including at least one at Damascus International Airport, an intelligence facility and a training camp, all belonging to Iran’s Quds Force, the expeditionary arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which Israel and the West accuse of trying to gain a military foothold in Syria.

“The Iranian attack on Israeli territory yesterday was more clear proof of the purpose of Iran’s efforts to entrench itself in Syria, and the danger this poses to the state of Israel and regional stability,” the IDF said in a statement Monday.

The IDF has increasingly taken to announcing its strikes against Iranian forces in Syria, after years in which it maintained a policy of ambiguity, with reports of Israeli strikes coming from within Syria or from foreign news outlets.

It released video footage of the attack, including on social media.

“The Israeli missiles managed to destroy weapons depots and military posts of the Iranians and the Lebanese Hezbollah in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport and the area of Al-Kiswah and Jamraya,” the group said in a statement.

In all, 11 people were reported killed in the strikes, including Iranian and Iranian-allied forces, and Syrian army soldiers.