Israel blasts rockets over Syria
Jerusalem – Israel said it attacked nearly all of Iran’s military infrastructure in Syria yesterday after Iranian forces fired rockets at Israeli-held territory for the first time.
It was the heaviest Israeli barrage in Syria since the start in 2011 of its civil war, in which Iranians, allied Shi’ite militias and Russian soldiers have deployed in support of President Bashar al-Assad.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in Syria. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the Iranian rockets either fell short of their targets, military bases in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, or were intercepted.
Expectations of a regional flareup, amid warnings from Israel it was determined to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in Syria, were stoked by US President Donald Trump’s announcement that he was withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal.
The Trump administration portrayed its position against that agreement as a response, in part, to Tehran’s military interventions in the region – underpinning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough line towards Iran.
The Golan attack was “just further demonstration that the Iranian regime cannot be trusted and another good reminder that the president made the right decision to get out of the Iran deal”, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told Fox News.
Israel said 20 Iranian Grad and Fajr rockets were shot down by its Iron Dome air defence system or did not reach targets in the Golan, territory it captured from Syria in a 1967 war.