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Satellite Image: Israel Attack Damaged Syrian Airport Runway

This file photo taken on October 1, 2020 shows the Syrian flag flying at Damascus International Airport outside Syria’s capital. (Louai Beshara/AFP)
This file photo taken on October 1, 2020 shows the Syrian flag flying at Damascus International Airport outside Syria’s capital. (Louai Beshara/AFP)
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Satellite Image: Israel Attack Damaged Syrian Airport Runway

This file photo taken on October 1, 2020 shows the Syrian flag flying at Damascus International Airport outside Syria’s capital. (Louai Beshara/AFP)
This file photo taken on October 1, 2020 shows the Syrian flag flying at Damascus International Airport outside Syria’s capital. (Louai Beshara/AFP)

An Israeli attack targeting a Syrian airport tore a hole in the runway and also damaged a nearby piece of tarmac and structure on the military side of the airfield, satellite photos analyzed Friday by The Associated Press showed.

The attack Wednesday night on Aleppo International Airport comes as an Israeli strike only months earlier took out the runway at the country's main airport in the capital, Damascus, over Iranian weapons transfers to the country.

Syria's state-run SANA news agency acknowledged the attack Wednesday, without offering details on the damage or what was targeted.

The satellite photos taken Thursday by Planet Labs PBC showed vehicles gathered around the site of one of the strikes at the airport, near the western edge of its sole runway. The strike tore a hole through the runway, as well as ignited a grassfire at the airfield.

Just south of the runway damage on the military side of the airport, debris lay scattered after another strike that struck an object on the tarmac and another structure.

Syria, like many Middle East nations, have dual-use airports that include civilian and military sides. Flights at the airport have been disrupted by the attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition war monitor, alleged immediately after the strike that Israel targeted an Iranian missile shipment to the Aleppo airport. Iran, as well as Lebanon's allied Hezbollah militant group, has been crucial to embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad remaining in power since a war began in his country amid the 2011 Arab Spring.

Just before the strike, a transponder on an Antonov An-74 cargo plane flown by Iran's Yas Air sanctioned years earlier by the US Treasury over flying weapons on behalf of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard briefly pinged near Aleppo, according to flight-tracking data. The altitude and location suggested the plane planned to land in Aleppo.

Cargo aircraft over Syria often don't broadcast their location data. A phone number listed to Yas Air rang unanswered Friday.

Iran and Syria's missions to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday from The Associated Press. Israel, which has conducted numerous attacks on Syria in its shadow war with Iran in the wider Mideast, has not directly acknowledged Wednesday's strike.

The strike comes as tensions across the wider Mideast remain high as negotiations over Iran's tattered nuclear deal with world powers hang in the balance.

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Lebanese President Sponsors Dialogue with Hezbollah on its Weapons, State Monopoly over Arms 

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri meet at the Baabda presidential palace on Monday. (Lebanese Presidency)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri meet at the Baabda presidential palace on Monday. (Lebanese Presidency)
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Lebanese President Sponsors Dialogue with Hezbollah on its Weapons, State Monopoly over Arms 

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri meet at the Baabda presidential palace on Monday. (Lebanese Presidency)
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri meet at the Baabda presidential palace on Monday. (Lebanese Presidency)

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and parliament Speaker Nabih Berri held a meeting at the Baabda presidential palace on Monday to pave the way for dialogue with Hezbollah leaders on the Iran-backed party’s possession of arms and need for the state to have monopoly over arms in the country.

Official sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that dialogue with Hezbollah aims to test the waters and the extent to which it is prepared to reach an agreement on its arsenal. Berri, Hezbollah’s sole remaining ally in Lebanon, supports intervening on behalf of the party – if necessary – to bridge any divides in the dialogue.

Any agreement will be followed with the drafting of a national security strategy for Lebanon, including a defense strategy, added the sources.

The sources said direct dialogue between Aoun and Hezbollah over the state monopoly over arms remains the better option than referring the issue to a dialogue table with other political parties seeing as agreements reached during past rounds of talks over the years were never implemented.

Deputy US special envoy to the Middle East Morgan Ortagus, who was in Lebanon last week, expressed to Aoun her understanding of his desire to hold direct dialogue with Hezbollah.

However, she stressed that time is not in Lebanon’s favor as it needs to resolve the issue which would pave the way for other solutions to its numerous crises.

Ortagus met during her visit with Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Berri.

Talks with the Lebanese leaders helped “soften the American stance” over Lebanon’s approach towards Hezbollah’s weapons possession because “resorting to force to disarm the party will jeopardize civil peace in the country,” said the sources.

Ortagus stated she was willing to travel to Beirut for a third time this year, possibly at the end of April or early May, to follow up on financial reforms and efforts to limit the possession of weapons to the state.

She has stressed the need for Lebanon to meet its obligations “as soon as possible” to avoid the dialogue becoming a waste of time and to prevent Lebanon from heading towards a collision course with the international community which has set as a priority the state achieving monopoly over arms.

Fulfilling that demand will restore confidence in Lebanon and speed up international efforts to help it resolve its crises.

The sources said Hezbollah is aware that limiting the possession of weapons won’t happen “at the press of a button.” However, stalling over the issue will not provide it with excuses to renege on its commitment to implement United Nations Security Council resolution 1701 and declaration that it will stand by the state in reaching diplomatic solutions that would make Israel respect the ceasefire and withdraw from the South.

Hezbollah has effectively become isolated with no allies but Berri. The party cannot escape local, Arab and international pressure to disarm, especially after the weakening of the “Resistance Axis”, which it is a part of, and Iran’s waning influence in the region, political sources told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Iran’s sole concern now is protecting its regime, they stressed.

So, Hezbollah has no choice but to join efforts to build a state and commit to conditions that have been imposed by the changes in the region and Lebanon, they went to say.

Hezbollah’s launch of its “support front” with Gaza and dragging Lebanon into a reckless confrontation with Israel has cost it dearly and it can no longer rise from under the rubble – in the political sense – without outside financial and economic support to help it rebuild what Israel destroyed, said the sources.

The question remains: will dialogue lead Hezbollah to disarm and agree to the state to have monopoly over weapons? Or will it use the dialogue to gain time as Iran seeks to improve its conditions as it prepares to hold negotiations with the US?

European parties had advised the party to reassess its calculations and reconsider its stances so that it places Lebanon first in its political choices so that it can reconcile with its political parties after years of tensions sparked by its monopoly of the decision of war and peace.