TEL AVIV — In the early hours of April 9, Israeli fighter jets bombed the Tiyas air force base in central Syria, killing at least seven military personnel.
Israel wasn’t targeting Syria’s chemical weapons program, as the US would do four days later in response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical attack on civilians in the Syrian town of Douma.
Israel was instead going after a very different enemy: Iran. And the dead troops weren’t Syrian; they were Iranian.
It was far from the first time Israel has hit Iran and its various allied groups in Syria. Iran has alarmed Israeli and American officials by steadily expanding its military presence across Israel’s northern border with Syria in recent years, and Israel has responded numerous times. Some senior US and Israeli officials also worry that Tehran might restart its nuclear program if the Trump administration pulls out of the Iran nuclear deal, which President Trump has threatened to do by a self-imposed May 12 deadline.
But this latest strike was the most direct and brazen yet. Tehran has threatened to retaliate, and Israel has made clear that it’s prepared to keep fighting.
The Iranian response — considered now not a question of if, but when — could take many forms, ranging from missiles launched from Iran, Lebanon, or Syria against Israeli cities to cross-border raids from Syria or Lebanon to terror attacks against Israeli or Jewish targets abroad.
Israel, for its part, has promised an even stronger response if this happens, threatening all of Iran’s soldiers in Syria and even the Assad regime itself.
The tough talk reflects Jerusalem’s insistence that it won’t allow Tehran to turn Syria into a forward operating base for it and its proxies to attack Israel.
All of which points to a frightening and little-understood new reality: What was previously a shadow conflict inside Syria between Israel and Iran is now threatening to explode into all-out war between the two bitter Middle East foes.
