Syria’s allies denounce Israeli strike

Syria’s allies on Thursday strongly condemned Israel’s airstrike on a Syrian target, calling the move “open aggression” that challenged the legitimacy of the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

Angry statements from Russia, Iran and the militantly anti-Israel group Hezbollah underscored the risk that Israel’s action — which analysts and Western officials described as an attempt to stop the transfer of weapons from Syria to Hezbollah outposts in Lebanon — could hasten the spillover of the civil war in Syria into a wider conflict.

“Those who have had harsh approaches toward the conflict in Syria must now take affective measures against this aggression by Tel Aviv and consider the security of the region,” Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, said in a report published by the Mehr News Agency.

Hinting at some unspecified sort of retaliation, he said Israel should not rely on its vaunted Iron Dome missile shield, which blocked many incoming missiles during the country’s recent military offensive in the Gaza Strip.

Iran and Hezbollah said Wednesday’s strike was proof of Assad’s longtime claim that the civil war raging in Syria is the work of outside groups, rather than rebels from inside the country.

Russia, Syria’s strongest international ally, said Moscow is taking “urgent measures to clarify the situation in all its details,” the Associated Press reported, citing a statement issued by Russia’s Foreign Ministry. “If this information is confirmed, we have a case of unprovoked attacks on targets in the territory of a sovereign state, which grossly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable. Whatever the motives, this is not justified,” the statement said.

The strike inside Syria was Israel’s first since 2007. There were conflicting reports about the target and its location. A Western official and a former Lebanese security official said earlier Wednesday that Israel had attacked inside Syria along the border with Lebanon, and the former Lebanese official said an unmanned aircraft had hit a truck carrying weapons.

But in a later statement, the Syrian army denied a strike along the border and said instead that Israeli jets had bombed a defense research center near Damascus, killing two employees and wounding five. The statement denied that a convoy had been hit near the border with Lebanon, calling the reports “baseless.”

Israel declined to comment, as did the U.S. government, which deferred to Israel, a key security partner. The response was similar to the silence that followed Israel’s bombing five years ago of a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor, an attack that U.S. officials later confirmed but that the Israelis have not acknowledged to date.

Wednesday’s strike reflected deepening Israeli concerns that the Syria’s disintegration could lead to the transfer of advanced weapons to Islamist militants there or to Hezbollah in Lebanon, posing new threats to Israel’s military reach across its borders.

Hezbollah called the strike “a savage attack” aimed at preventing Muslim and Arab countries from developing their “technological and military capabilities,” and accused Israel of fomenting the civil unrest inside Syria. “The assault blatantly uncovers the reality of what’s coming on in Syria since two years ago,” the statement from the militant group said. 

Although the Hezbollah statement condemned the attack, it stopped short of calling for military retaliation. The statement also said that the attack is “an opportunity for some sides to review their stances and adopt the dialogue as the only solution to stop the bloodshed” in Syria.

The Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul Karim Ali, was more ambiguous about how the Syrian government would react. He said Damascus has “the option and the surprise to retaliate,” according to the AP. 

In a statement read on state television, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi called the Israeli strike “open aggression” that “proves that the terrorist groups who destroy calmness and security in Syria are in line with the goals of the Zionists.”

Concerns about Hezbollah

The AP, citing unnamed regional security officials, said that Israel had been planning to target a Syrian shipment of antiaircraft missiles bound for Hezbollah and that the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 missiles. Western officials said there was no indication the strike targeted chemical weapons.

Although Israeli and U.S. security officials have said that Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles were secure for now, there is profound concern in Israel about a parallel transfer of advanced conventional weapons to Hezbollah.

Giora Eiland, a former head of Israel’s national security council, said in an interview that any transfer to Hezbollah of weapons considered to be game-changers, such as the Russian antiaircraft missiles or long-range Scud missiles, is viewed as gravely as the chemical threat.

The antiaircraft weapons could curtail Israel’s air dominance in Lebanon, and the long-range missiles could give Hezbollah — which fought a war with Israel in 2006 — enhanced strike range across Israel’s entire territory.

“These are no less troubling than chemical weapons,” Eiland said. “They are more widespread and not as tightly controlled by the regime, so they can fall into the hands of Hezbollah.”

On Sunday, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom told Army Radio that the movement of chemical weapons to Islamist rebels in Syria or to Hezbollah would be “a crossing of all red lines that would require a different approach, including even preventive operations.” He confirmed media reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had convened a meeting of top security chiefs last week to discuss developments in Syria and its chemical arsenal.

In public comments Sunday at the start of the weekly cabinet session, Netanyahu said Israel had to keep an eye on “lethal weaponry in Syria, which is breaking apart.” He added that there is “an accumulation of threats” for which Israel has to prepare.

Two Iron Dome missile defense batteries were positioned Sunday in northern Israel, in what the army called part of a routine rotation nationwide.

Many regional analysts say Hezbollah has not only restocked its weapons arsenal since the 2006 war but has also greatly expanded the supply and sophistication of its rockets. In a speech in May 2012, Hasan Nasrallah, the group’s leader, said Hezbollah could now launch rockets anywhere in Israel, and he later remarked that Syria had supplied the group’s most potent weapons.

Amnon Sofrin, a former director of intelligence for Israel’s foreign spy agency, the Mossad, told reporters in Jerusalem on Wednesday that with Syria in turmoil, Nasrallah was eager “to move to Lebanon everything he can under his custody.” Sofrin said Israel was watching carefully for convoys of weapons moving to Lebanon from Syria, where Hezbollah is thought to have stored some of its arms.

Mystery about motives

The Syrian assertion that Israel had bombed a research center deepened the mystery surrounding the possible motives for the attack. The official statement suggested that the target might have been a facility near Damascus operated by the Scientific Studies and Research Center, an arm of Syria’s armed forces that Western experts have linked to the country’s missiles and chemical weapons programs.

In 2005, the George W. Bush administration sanctioned the SSRC in an executive order, and two years later, the White House froze the assets of several of the center’s subsidiaries, on the grounds that SSRC scientists were seeking to develop “non-conventional weapons and the missiles to deliver them.”

Yet, military experts cautioned that there was no independent evidence that the facility had been bombed by a foreign air force. Syria may simply be trying to blame Israel for the loss of a facility that had fallen to rebels or been destroyed by other means, said Anthony Cordesman, a senior analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“Would the Israelis have hit a facility that may have some chemical weapons in it? It’s doubtful,” said Cordesman, who co-authored a 2008 study of Syria’s weapons program. “If they did, Syria could respond by dispersing its arsenal further, which would increase the risk to Israel.”

On Wednesday morning, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights released a list of security incidents that included reports of shelling and a “huge fire” in the Jamraya area.

Rami Abdulrahman, who is the director of the monitoring group and who uses a pseudonym, said in an interview that reports about the incident were conflicting, with some local sources saying that it involved mortar shells and others alleging that Syrian airplanes struck the building.

Dehghanpisheh reported from Beirut. Jason Rezaian in Tehran and Joby Warrick, Julie Tate, Karen DeYoung and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.