Israeli operation against senior Iranian officials in Syria

New Tel Aviv operation on Syrian territory. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched an air strike on Al-Shayrat airfield, located a few kilometers south of the city of Homs, late Tuesday afternoon, according to the official Syrian agency SANA.

Indeed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) confirmed the launching of up to eight missiles by several Israeli fighters from Lebanese airspace. 

Once they were on their national territory, Bachar al-Asad's Syrian Arab Army activated their air defense systems, which enabled them to shoot down some of the shells. Others, however, did make an impact.

The aim of the meeting was, according to the Emirate newspaper Al-Ain, a high-level meeting between officers of the Syrian and Iranian armed forces. There were no official casualties. There was initial speculation that among the dead was Ismail Qaani, Qassem Soleimani's successor as head of the Quds Forces of the Revolutionary Guard. 

However, the Iranian elite corps itself has quickly disproved this theory in a statement, reporting that Qaani was in fact in Baghdad. General Qaani was appointed to fill Soleimani's position in mid-January, just days after his assassination in a military operation carried out by the US Army.

In that bombing earlier this year, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, then head of the People's Mobilization Forces (PMF), a Tehran-based Shiite militia operating in Iraq as a destabilizing factor, was also killed. In fact, Tuesday's attack is quite similar in conception to the one that killed Soleimani.

Israeli attacks on Syria in recent years have occurred sporadically and generally in the context of the dispute between the two countries over the Golan Heights. This territory, occupied by Tel Aviv in the Six Day War (1967), has been reclaimed by Syria on numerous occasions, although without success to date. The dispute has prompted armed groups, some at the end of the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, to launch campaigns against the Israel Defense Forces deployed there. However, attacks on third State nationals on foreign soil - as, in theory, was supposed to be the case - have not been so frequent.

This episode, however, is a good example of the harmony that exists between the administrations of Damascus and Tehran. Iran is possibly Al-Asad's second most powerful ally after Russia. Recently, pro-Iranian operatives have engaged in recruiting young Syrian Shiites to join the ranks of various Iranian-funded armed groups. 

The number of new recruits is believed to be around 9,000. Thanks to the drive of the Al-Asad Army and the support of the powerful Russian aviation, these and other Damascus-like organizations have gained ground in the Idlib and Saraqeb area against rebel militias financed by Turkey and Qatar. It is there where the latest fighting between the two sides continues to take place.

The regime remains determined to re-conquer the entire country, regardless of the ceasefire signed in early March by Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.