Ever since the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979, Iran and Israel have been fighting each other in the shadows – through proxies, assassination squads and cyber-virus attacks, but never as rival armies on the field of battle. That may be about to change, and if it does, it will have vast implications for Syria, Lebanon and the whole Middle East.
I’m sure neither side really wants a war. It could be devastating for Israel’s flourishing high-tech economy and for Iran’s already collapsing currency. But Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force seems determined to try to turn Syria into a base from which to pressure Israel, and Israel seems determined to prevent that. And in the past few weeks – for the first time ever – Israel and Iran have begun quietly trading blows directly, not through proxies, in Syria.
They have already gone through two rounds, and Round 3, now pending, could blow Syria sky-high.
Round 1 occurred on February 10, when an Iranian drone launched by a Quds Force unit operating out of Syria’s T4 air base in central Syria was shot down with a missile from an Israeli Apache helicopter that was following it after it penetrated northern Israel airspace.
If true, that suggests that the Quds Force – commanded by Iran’s military mastermind Qassem Suleimani – was trying to launch an actual military strike on Israel.
“This is the first time we saw Iran do something against Israel – not by proxy,” a senior Israeli military source told me. “This opened a new period.”
Read the article by Thomas Friedman in the Australian Financial Review.