War fears as Israel strikes back
Israel and Iran lurched closer to all-out war yesterday after the Israeli military claimed it struck ‘‘almost all’’ of Iran’s bases in Syria in response to what it said was an Iranian rocket barrage fired at the Golan Heights.
The exchange of fire was the most direct confrontation between the two Middle East rivals after years of standoff in Syria and came one day after Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear agreement and reimposed sanctions on the regime.
Israel carried out its largest wave of air strikes in Syria since the 1973 war, hitting around 70 Iranian military bases, supply depots and intelligence sites, as well as Syrian regime air-defence batteries, its military said.
‘‘We . . . struck almost all the Iranian infrastructure in Syria, and they need to remember this arrogance of theirs,’’ said Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli defence minister. ‘‘If we get rain, they’ll get a flood.’’
The attacks were in response to a barrage of 20 rockets that Israel said were fired by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard towards the Golan, a mountainous region that Israel annexed from Syria after capturing it in 1967.
There were no casualties on the Israeli side. The country’s military said its Iron Dome missile defence system intercepted four of the rockets just after midnight yesterday, while the other 16 fell harmlessly in Syrian territory.
At least 23 people were killed by the Israeli strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. It was not clear how many of the dead were Iranians. Iran has neither confirmed nor denied that it was responsible for launching the attacks.
Israel has said repeatedly it would not allow Iran to build up a permanent military presence in Syria and was prepared to go to war to stop it. ‘‘Whoever hurts us, we will hurt him sevenfold. Whoever tries to hurt us, we will act to hurt him beforehand,’’ said Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
Tensions between the two sides have risen sharply since April 9, when a suspected Israeli strike on the T4 airbase in central Syria killed at least seven Iranians. Iran vowed revenge and Israel has been warning for weeks that it was expecting an Iranian attack.
Britain and the US were quick to issue messages of support for Israel and condemnation of Iran. ‘‘The United Kingdom condemns in the strongest terms the Iranian rocket attacks against Israeli forces,’’ said Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary. ‘‘We strongly support Israel’s right to defend itself.’’
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Theresa