WarSclerotic

Syria accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes on a military airfield near Damascus just before dawn on Monday, saying that its air defense units had “confronted the Israeli aggression.”

Though the Israel Defense Forces did not comment on the allegation, the attack came a day after Defense Minister Naftali Bennett hinted that the military was poised to take action in Syria.

“Keep your ears open. We’ve gone from a policy of blocking [Iran] to pushing it out,” Bennett told the 103FM radio station on Sunday.

It was the third attack on Iranian targets in Syria attributed to Israel in the past 10 days.

Syrian state news agency SANA said limited damage was caused by the strikes on the Mezzeh military airport outside Damascus, but no casualties. The airbase, reportedly used by Iranian forces in Syria, has been attacked several times in airstrikes attributed to Israel.

According to SANA, Israeli jets fired several of the missiles in the attack from Lebanese airspace, and they were intercepted.

Syria state media regularly claims that the Syrian military intercepts incoming Israeli missiles, though those assertions are viewed as highly questionable.

Video posted to social media showed several anti-aircraft missiles being fired into the air, followed by loud explosions.

Though Israeli officials generally refrain from taking responsibility for specific strikes in Syria, they have acknowledged conducting hundreds to thousands of raids in the country since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

These have overwhelmingly been directed against Iran and its proxies, notably the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group, but the IDF has also carried out strikes on Syrian air defenses when those batteries have fired at Israeli jets.

Last week Syria accused Israel of hitting targets near Homs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the targets were “military posts for Iranian militias in the Palmyra desert.”

Jerusalem says Iran’s presence in Syria, where it is fighting in support of President Bashar Assad, is a threat, as Tehran seeks to establish a permanent foothold along Israel’s northern borders.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Wednesday that it launched a military satellite into orbit amid wider tensions with the United States, describing it as a successful launch after months of failures.

There was no immediate independent confirmation of the launch of the satellite, which the Guard called “Noor,” or light. The US State Department and the Pentagon, which contend that such launches advance Iran’s ballistic missile program, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On its official website, the Guard said the satellite successfully reached an orbit of 425 kilometers (264 miles) above the Earth’s surface. The Guard called it the first military satellite ever launched by Tehran.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry denounced the claimed launch.

“Israel strongly condemns the military satellite launch attempt by the Revolutionary Guards, a terror organization that is recognized as such by the United States,” it said in a statement.

“Israel calls on the international community to condemn the launch and impose additional sanctions on the Iranian regime to deter it from its defiant and dangerous activities,” the statement added.

The two-stage satellite launch took off from Iran’s Central Desert, the Guard said, without elaborating or saying when exactly the launch took place. The paramilitary force said it used a Ghased, or “Messenger,” satellite carrier to put the device into space, a previously unheard-of system.

The launch comes amid tensions between Tehran and Washington over its collapsing nuclear deal and after a US drone strike in Iraq killed Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January.

Iran has suffered several failed satellite launches in recent months. The latest came in February, when Iran failed to put its Zafar 1 communications satellite into orbit.

That failure came after two failed launches of the Payam and Doosti satellites last year, as well as a launchpad rocket explosion in August. A separate fire at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in February 2019 also killed three researchers, authorities said at the time.

This image taken from the Twitter account of US President Donald Trump, shows what appears to be a US intelligence photo of the aftermath of an explosion at Iran’s Imam Khomeini Space Center in the country’s Semnan province, August 29, 2019, with the smoldering remains of a rocket on a launch pad at the center, which was to conduct a US-criticized satellite launch. (Twitter via AP)

The rocket explosion in August drew even the attention of US President Donald Trump, who later tweeted what appeared to be a classified surveillance image of the launch failure. The successive failures raised suspicion of outside interference in Iran’s program, something Trump himself hinted at by tweeting at the time that the US “was not involved in the catastrophic accident.”

The US alleges such satellite launches defy a UN Security Council resolution calling on Iran to undertake no activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons. American officials, as well as European nations, worry that these launches could help Iran develop intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

Iran, which long has said it does not seek nuclear weapons, previously maintained its satellite launches and rocket tests do not have a military component. The Guard launching its own satellite now calls that into question.

In this photo from February 7, 2019, by Sepahnews, the website of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a Dezful surface-to-surface ballistic missile is displayed in an undisclosed location in Iran. (Sepahnews via AP)

Tehran also says it hasn’t violated a UN resolution on its ballistic missile program as it only “called upon” Iran not to conduct such tests. Western missile experts have also questioned the US contention that Iran’s program could have a dual use for nuclear weapons.

Over the past decade, Iran has sent several short-lived satellites into orbit and in 2013 launched a monkey into space.

The launch comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and the US since Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers in May 2018. Iran since has broken all the deal’s limitations while still allowing UN inspectors to its sites.

On Sunday, the Guard acknowledged it had a tense encounter with US warships in the Persian Gulf last week, but alleged without offering evidence that American forces sparked the incident.