Israel confirms strike on Iranian targets in Syria
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel acknowledged on Sunday that Israeli forces had attacked Iranian weapons warehouses in Syria, after years of ambiguity over involvement in specific attacks on the country.
“We worked with impressive success to block Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria,” Netanyahu said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, adding that the Israeli military had struck Iranian and Hezbollah targets “hundreds of times.”
“Just in the last 36 hours, the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus,” Netanyahu said. “The accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria, just as we promised.”
The rare admission came hours after the Israeli military announced that it had exposed the sixth and final tunnel under its border with Lebanon, which it says the Iranian-backed organization Hezbollah dug, wrapping up a six-week operation to seal the cross-border tunnels.
The public airing of security achievements came as the departing military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, is ending his fouryear term and 40-year army career and as Netanyahu is campaigning for re-election under a cloud of corruption investigations.
Netanyahu, who, in addition to being prime minister is defense minister and foreign minister, among other roles, would stand to benefit from projecting the image of being tough about security ahead of the April 9 election, even as he faces possible bribery charges.
His opponents had accused him of over-dramatizing the anti-tunnel operation and of fearmongering to distract the public’s attention after the Israeli police recommended that Netanyahu be indicted on bribery, fraud and other charges in a third corruption case against him.
Regarding the disclosure about the attack in Syria, Omer Bar-Lev, a lawmaker in the opposition Labor party, wrote on Twitter on Sunday, “It’s a shame and disgrace that the prime minister is violating the policy of ambiguity that was appropriate for the last three years in the campaign between the wars in Syria, for political purposes.”