On 1 April, Israel reportedly struck what Iran claims was its consulate in Damascus, killing IRGC-QF Commander in Syria and Lebanon Mohammad Reza Zahedi, his deputy Mohammad-Hadi Haji-Rahimi, five other IRGC officers, and six unnamed Syrian civilians that the al-Assad regime thus far has refused to identify.
In response, Israel claimed the structure was a four-story “military building of Quds Forces disguised as a civilian building.”
As the world awaits Iran’s threatened response, a closer look at the funeral announcement of a Syrian mother and son killed in the strike indicates that (at a minimum) the building itself was not formally part of the consulate or embassy grounds— the latest sign of the very subtle game between Iran and Israel in Syria that has helped keep al-Assad on the sidelines of the Gaza war.
But a key similarity of the funeral announcement with that of another Syrian mother and son killed in a reported Israeli strike on 7 February in Homs is raising anxiety levels in Damascus and elsewhere surrounding the recent remarkable precision of Israeli assassination strikes of Iranians and Hezbollah operatives in Syria.
Spike in Israeli attacks
In the six months since Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel, open-source reporting indicates Israel has carried out over 50 air strikes in Syria, including five on Aleppo airport, two on the adjacent Nairab military airport, four on Damascus airport, and one on the Mezzeh military airport.
All reportedly targeted Iranian assets, including weapons warehouses. While Israeli air strikes on airfields and facilities in Syria are nothing new in the 13-year and counting Syrian war, the strike tempo remains nearly double that of pre-7 October levels.
The same reports show Israel’s targeting has also changed. Since 7 October, there has been a sharp uptick of Israeli air strikes on Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Iran-aligned groups leaderships operating in Syria, including 18 IRGC officers, approximately 32 from Lebanese Hezbollah, and one from Hamas.
In comparison, between January and October 2023, only two IRGC officers and none from Lebanese Hezbollah or Hamas perished from Israeli strikes.
But the largest number of deaths from reported Israeli strikes in Syria since 7 October have been Syrians. Approximately 75 Syrians have perished in reported Israeli air strikes — 45 of which (or 60 %) occurred in the last two weeks alone following a massive March 29 Israeli strike in Aleppo province.
Al-Assad’s passivity
A rise in Syrian casualties before the Syrian war probably would have enticed al-Assad to enter the Gaza conflict in support of Iran and Hamas by now.
But since 7 October, al-Assad—despite tough talk and continued references to his regime’s sovereignty over a country he has not controlled for a decade—has largely sat out the Gaza conflict, with only between 20-30 missile or rocket attacks from Syria on Israeli-controlled territory.
Nearly all of which have reportedly “landed in open areas” and led to no Israeli casualties—which is read in Washington and elsewhere as a sort of code that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad wants to stay out of the Gaza conflict. Israel has responded with mostly artillery fire and some air strikes on the launch sites.
It is easy to understand why al-Assad remains on Gaza’s sidelines. The al-Assad regime—beset with shortages, hyperinflation and without military control of most of the country’s agricultural and fossil fuels—is exhausted.
Its military forces are spread thin and are increasingly coming under attack from the Islamic State (IS) in central Syria and Hay'at Tahrir as-Sham (HTS) from the northwest.
While much media attention has focused on reports that Washington is developing plans to withdraw from Syria at some point, the fact is that the al-Assad regime is unlikely to be able to take and hold resource-rich eastern Syria without striking a deal with the Kurdish PKK-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces SDF, which until now Damascus has been unwilling to do on terms other than the SDF’s total integration into the Syrian Arab Army.
This has reportedly led two of al-Assad’s allies—Russia and the United Arab Emirates—to urge al-Assad to stay out of the Gaza conflict.
Both do not want to jeopardise the regime’s tenuous grip on the parts of the country it supposedly controls, as well as the regime’s chances of obtaining much-needed reconstruction funds that are currently blocked by the US “Caesar'' sanctions and Jordanian and Arab Gulf bafflement over the large flows of Captagon that continue out of Syrian territory into Jordan and beyond.
Both Moscow and Abu Dhabi have close relations with Israel, which for nearly a decade has focused not only on the Syrian war but also on a settlement that has al-Assad remaining in control of the country, with Iran playing a subordinate role.
Syria’s continued de facto partition between the US, Turkey, Russia and Iran, and notably the latter’s militias that spent months hitting US forces in Eastern Syria (leading to the deaths of three American soldiers and multiple US retaliatory strikes), shows good reason for Moscow and Abu Dhabi’s advice.
Read more: Why is Syria staying quiet on Gaza?
