Israel says it “will not allow” Iran to build up a long-term military position on its borders, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu delivered the warning to Russia, which has been Iran’s partner in backing Syrian President Bashar Assad, during a meeting in Tel Aviv on Tuesday. The talks occurred as coalition forces are nearly finished liberating the Islamic State’s capital of Raqqa as key world powers try to secure long-term strategic gains out of the Syrian civil war.
“Iran is attempting to establish itself militarily in Syria,” Netanyahu tweeted Tuesday after a meeting with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. “I told [Shoigu]: Iran needs to understand that Israel will not allow this.”
Netanyahu’s message gets at the deeper logic of the Syrian civil war. Where world powers have united in condemnation of ISIS, much of the conflict reflected longer-term objectives than the defeat of the terrorist group. Russia and Iran partnered to support Assad as he fought a combination of terrorists and U.S.-backed rebels. With Assad in power, Iran hopes to have enough military influence in Syria to cooperate directly with their terrorist proxies in Lebanon.
That’s intolerable to Israel, which shares a border with Syria and Lebanon. “Iran is busy turning Syria into a base of military entrenchment and it wants to use Syria and Lebanon as war fronts [in] its declared goal to eradicate Israel,” Netanyahu said in August.
Russia replied with a veiled rebuke of Netanyahu. “If anyone in the Middle East or [an]other part of the world plans to violate international law by undermining any other country’s sovereignty or territorial integrity, including any country in the Middle East or North Africa, this would be condemned,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told reporters.
Israel ignored that warning Monday by striking a Syrian anti-aircraft battery that Israeli Defense Forces said fired toward one of their aircraft flying over Lebanon.
“The Syrian regime is responsible for the anti-aircraft fire,” an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said in a series of tweets. “The IDF maintains its ability to thwart hostilities against Israeli civilians. Preserving the relative stability is a common interest. Israel has no intention of destabilizing the situation.”
Israel’s moves could be significant for the broader balance of power in the Middle East. For Iran to form a so-called land bridge to Lebanon, the regime’s forces and partners have to control territory in Syria and Iraq. Netanyahu’s implicit threat to block Iran in Syria comes as Tehran is seeing new gains in Iraq, where domestic infighting has created an opening for Iran to help Baghdad fight against Iraqi Kurds, an ethnic minority friendly to the United States that seeks to declare independence from the central government.
It’s a conflict that U.S. leaders have expected to break out after the defeat of ISIS. “The day after Raqqa falls is going to be the moment that Iran moves to try to oust the United States from the region,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., told the Washington Examiner in February.
