Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi on his way to a news conference in Damascus yesterday. Photo: ReutersSyrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi said yesterday that Israeli air strikes against three targets on the outskirts of Damascus “open the door to all possibilities.”
The Minister’s comments at a press conference came after an emergency Cabinet meeting organised to respond to what a Western source said was a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon’s Hizbollah.
Although Zoabi did not hint at a concrete course of action, he said it was Damascus’s duty to protect the state from any “domestic or foreign attack through all available means.”
Yesterday’s attack is the third Israeli assault this year on Syrian soil. Previous strikes on Syria by Israel – which commands one of the most advanced militaries in the world and is backed by the US – have not elicited a military response from Syria or its allies Iran and Lebanon’s Hizbollah.
Israel declined to confirm the strike so as not to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into serious retaliation, according to a confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Syria’s revolt-turned-civil war has entered its third year and 70,000 people have been killed. Millions have been displaced and the conflict threatens to destabilise the entire region and draw in world powers who hope to influence the outcome. Meanwhile experts say Iran was squarely in Israel’s sights when it sent its planes to hit targets in Syria, waging a war-within-a-war that showed a readiness to strike out alone if its red lines were crossed.
Allegations of Syrian government forces using chemical weapons have grabbed headlines and driven new calls for US President Barack Obama to intervene in Syria’s civil war.
But when it took military action over the weekend while Washington stayed on the sidelines, Israel was homing in on targets with strategic significance for its own possible war with Iran rather than for Syria’s internal fighting.
In both Israeli attacks, on Friday and yesterday, long-range, Iranian-supplied missiles destined for Lebanon’s Hizbollah guerrilla group were hit, Israeli and Western sources said.
Such weapons, along with what Israel believes to be a Hizbollah arsenal of about 60,000 other rockets, could pose a significant threat to Israeli cities in any future conflict.
Although the militant group could opt to strike any time, Israeli officials are particularly concerned about Hezbollah missile barrages as proxy retaliation should Israel carry out long-threatened attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities.
“We have very clear guidelines. We will not let game-changing weaponry reach the hands of Hizbollah. We will do whatever is necessary to stop that,” said Ofer Shelah of the Yesh Atid party, a member of Israel’s governing coalition.
Shelah, who also sits on Parliament’s foreign affairs and defence committee, was referring to a “red line” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has set on the Syrian conflict. “Beyond that, it is a murky situation,” Shelah added, pointing to Israeli ambivalence over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad.
A red line that Netanyahu famously drew for Iran’s uranium enrichment programme, in a cartoon bomb produced during a speech at the United Nations last September, has seemed more flexible. Last week, Netanyahu, who forecast Iran would cross the line in mid-2013, said it was still short of that mark. This raised further doubts over whether Israel would opt, against long-standing US advice, to launch a unilateral strike against what it believes is an Iranian bid to develop nuclear weapons.
For Israel, the threshold will be reached once Iran, which denies seeking atomic arms, will have amassed enough uranium at 20-percent fissile purity that could quickly be used to fuel just one nuclear bomb.