Israel and Iran clash in Syria for the first time

Sudden escalation of hostilities could have serious implications for the region

The remains of a missile that landed near the Syrian border after Israel's air strike
(Image credit: Ali Dia/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli and Iranian military forces have engaged for the first time Syria, in what The Sunday Times calls “a sudden escalation of hostilities after months of tension”.

Both Israel and Syria have signalled they are not seeking wider conflict and yesterday evening, Reuters reported the frontier was calm. However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a defiant tone and promised that Israeli forces would press ahead with Syria operations despite their loss of an advanced warplane to enemy fire for the first time in 36 years.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Despite the rhetoric, the LA Times says the chain of events “threatened to escalate into active combat between Syrian government forces and Israel, which has remained an outsider in the 7-year-old Syrian civil war”.

Both the United States, Israel’s closest ally, and Russia, which supports Assad in the Syrian civil war, have expressed concern over the latest clashes.

The sudden escalation also threatened to intensify the wider crisis in Syria “and showed the extent to which the country has become a battleground between Israel and Iran, bitter foes in the region”, reports the New York Times.

Iran has openly backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and provided him with funding, military equipment and personnel during the seven-year civil war. Now Israel fears Tehran is setting up bases in Syria, from which it could strike at the heart of Israel.