Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged for the first time Jan. 13 that Israel has carried out strikes against Iranian and Iranian-backed forces inside Syria. “We worked with impressive success to block Iran’s military entrenchment in Syria,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting. He added that Israel had carried out “hundreds of strikes,” claiming that it had just recently targeted alleged Iranian warehouses and Iranian targets at the international airport in Damascus and that Israel will continue such strikes as long as an Iranian presence remains in Syria.
Iran’s response to these attacks has been mostly muted. With the exception of the 2015 strike in Syria that killed Mohammad Ali Allahdadi, a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, alongside Jihad Mughniyah, former Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyah’s son, Iran has not divulged much information or visibly reacted to alleged attacks by Israel.
