Why did it take so long to target the facility and in whose interest was it to reveal the facility to the public?
In the early hours of December 2 reports claimed that a base or ammunition warehouse south of Damascus had been hit by missiles from an airstrike. Foreign media has alleged that Israel was behind that strike.
However, unlike previous airstrikes on Syria, some of which Israel has taken credit for, this one was conducted against a site that was well known. It raises questions as to the timing of the attack and what it was meant to achieve. Why did it take so long to target the facility and in whose interest was it to reveal the facility to the public? First, let’s look at the timeline of events in November that led to the attack.
For more than a year there have been warnings that Iran was intent on constructing permanent bases in Syria, laying the groundwork for the era after ISIS was defeated. On November 10 the BBC released a report that Iran was “building permanent military base in Syria.” The report had three satellite images with it, from January, May and October, showing a site near El-Kiswah south of Damascus. It was about 50km from Israeli forces on the Golan. The changes at the site showed new buildings and the BBC ascribed the information to a “western intelligence source.”
The report came out the day that Russian President Vladimir Putin met US President Donald Trump in Danang, Vietnam. It also came out two days after a Memorandum of Principles had been concluded in Amman between the US, Russia and Jordan regarding a ceasefire in southern Syria. This ceasefire had originally been inked in July, despite Israeli objections to the presence of Iranian-backed forces in southern Syria. Fred Hof, a former State Department special advisor for transition in Syria, told Foreign Policy that the agreement was supposed to remove foreign fighters from the area. “This could be designed mainly to reassure the Israelis that these elements would not be operating in proximity to the Golan Heights.”
According to reports Israel wanted assurances that Iranian forces would be kept 60km from the Golan. Two days after the revelations of the Iranian base at El-Kiswah, a US State Department official indicated to Israeli media that the ceasefire memorandum would include the removal of Iranian forces from areas near the Golan. Three days later, on November 14, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that the agreement did not promise to withdraw Iranian-backed forces.
The next day Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman responded that “with regards to Iran, we will simply not allow for Shi’ite consolidation and Iranian entrenchment in Syria, nor will we allow Syria to become a forward operating base against the State of Israel.” On the weekend of November 20th the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey met in Antalya in the lead up to a major summit in Sochi on November 22 hosted by Putin which included Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.
On November 26th the Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Israel had demanded Iranian facilities be kept 40 km away from the Golan. It also claimed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had sent a warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad. In an interview with Ynet Liberman sought to downplay the Iranian presence in Syria, saying Iran was not on Israel’s border.
This was followed by the airstrike on December 2. According to al-Masdar News, which is generally seen as pro-Syrian regime “Israel fired several missiles into western Syria tonight, targeting several sites near the Iranian base in the El-Kiswah area.” Russia Today also reported the airstrike and quotes Syrian media as saying they struck “military positions.” According to Press TV, which represents the Iranian government view, a source said that “an Israeli fighter jet was flying at a low altitude over Lebanon’s Baalbek region near Syria’s border when Syrian missiles were launched.” The report went on, claiming that “Israeli missiles were fired toward the 1st Division ammo depot in the western countryside of Damascus.”
The attack raises several questions. Why wait so long to strike the Iranian base? What did “western intelligence sources” hope to accomplish by publishing information on the Iranian base? Why were the Iranians at the site given time to leave by their base becoming so public? The month’s activity appear to be part of a complex game being waged by Iran to entrench itself in Syria and Israel’s attempts to warn the Iranians off. Whatever was taking place at El-Kiswah had plenty of time to be wrapped up and moved if the Iranians were concerned about it being struck. If the reports about Israel’s threats to target sites between 40-60km from the Golan are accurate then it would indicate that the warnings have been manifested.
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