Israeli Attacks Squeeze Iranian Aerial Supplies to Syria, Sources Say

This satellite photo released by Planet Labs PBC shows the damage after an Israeli strike targeted the Aleppo International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite photo released by Planet Labs PBC shows the damage after an Israeli strike targeted the Aleppo International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
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Israeli Attacks Squeeze Iranian Aerial Supplies to Syria, Sources Say

This satellite photo released by Planet Labs PBC shows the damage after an Israeli strike targeted the Aleppo International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)
This satellite photo released by Planet Labs PBC shows the damage after an Israeli strike targeted the Aleppo International Airport, Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Planet Labs PBC via AP)

Israel has intensified strikes on Syrian airports to disrupt Tehran's increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon including Hezbollah, regional diplomatic and intelligence sources told Reuters.

Tehran has adopted air transport as a more reliable means of ferrying military equipment to its forces and allied fighters in Syria, following disruptions to ground transfers.

Israel has long seen its foe Iran's deepening entrenchment in Syria as a national security threat and is widening the scope of its strikes to hit at this new transport method, the diplomatic and intelligence sources said.

The latest strikes on Wednesday night damaged Aleppo airport just before the arrival of a plane from Iran, a commander in an Iran-backed regional alliance who was familiar with the incident told Reuters.

Israel also carried out a strike on Damascus airport, damaging equipment, the government said, the second such attack airport since June when Israeli air strikes on the runway knocked it out of service for two weeks.

A Western intelligence source said that strike had also aimed to prevent the arrival of a cargo plane.

A spokesperson for the Israeli military declined to comment on the reports. Israel has been mounting attacks in Syria for years against what it has described as Iranian and Iran-backed forces that have deployed there during the 11-year war.

Ram Ben-Barak, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that Israel's goal in Syria is to prevent Iran's plan "to establish another front against Israel in Syria and strengthen Hezbollah's capabilities in Lebanon."

In an interview with Tel Aviv 102 FM, he added that Israel has "managed to foil this plan in various ways."

'Playing with fire'

Syria's foreign minister responded to Wednesday's air strikes by saying Israel was "playing with fire" and threatening regional security.

A regional diplomatic source told Reuters the strikes marked a shift in Israeli targeting. "They started to hit infrastructure used by the Iranians for ammunition supplies to Lebanon," the source said.

"In the past it was only the supplies but not the airport. Now, they hit the runway," the source added.

That shift has been prompted by Iran's increasing use of commercial airliners instead of ground transfers to shuttle weaponry into Syria’s two major airports, according to a Western intelligence source based in the region and a Syrian military defector familiar with the strikes’ targets.

The intelligence source said Israel’s intelligence-gathering had indicated "more flights were being used" to transport weapons and small military hardware that "can be smuggled in the regular civilian flights from Tehran."

In 2019, the United States sanctioned Mahan Air for transporting weapons and personnel to Iranian forces in Syria.

The Syrian military defector said such hardware typically included small UAV drone components, parts for precision-guided missiles and night vision equipment that are easy to "put in a carton in a civilian plane."

Ground transfers through Iraq, Syria and into Lebanon have been less appealing since local rivalries and turf wars along the Iraqi-Syrian border – where pro-Iran Iraqi militias are based – had been disrupting stock flows, the defector said.

When the Damascus airport was hit in June, Iran and allies began to increasingly use the Aleppo airport for transfers, he added – prompting the strikes there about two months later.

The strikes also provide clues as to where Iran is now deepening is entrenchment, said Nawar Shaaban, an analyst at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies, which focuses on Syria.

While the strikes years ago concentrated on areas around Damascus and military zones in the northwest, their spread to Aleppo and even coastal zones highlight locations from which Israel perceives a strategic threat to emanate, he said.

"The dangerous thing is that when we look at these areas that are being hit, it tells us that Iran has spread out more," Shaban said.

"Every time we see a strike hit a new area, the reaction is, 'whoah, Israel hit there'. But what we should be saying is, 'whoah, Iran is there'."



All 3 Iranian Consulates in Germany Ordered Shut

A photo taken on October 29, 2024 shows an exterior view of the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)
A photo taken on October 29, 2024 shows an exterior view of the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)
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All 3 Iranian Consulates in Germany Ordered Shut

A photo taken on October 29, 2024 shows an exterior view of the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)
A photo taken on October 29, 2024 shows an exterior view of the Iranian Embassy in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by John MACDOUGALL / AFP)

Germany ordered the closure of all three Iranian Consulates in the country on Thursday in response to the execution of Iranian German prisoner Jamshid Sharmahd, who lived in the United States and was kidnapped in 2020 by Iranian security forces.

Sharmahd, 69, was put to death in Iran on Monday on terrorism charges, the Iranian judiciary said. That followed a 2023 trial that Germany, the US and international rights groups dismissed as a sham.

The decision to close the Iranian Consulates in Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich, announced by Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, leaves Iran with only its embassy in Berlin, The Associated Press reported.

The German Foreign Ministry had already summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires on Tuesday to protest against Sharmahd’s execution. German Ambassador Markus Potzel also protested to Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, before being recalled to Berlin for consultations.

Sharmahd was one of several Iranian dissidents abroad in recent years either tricked or kidnapped back to Iran as Tehran began lashing out after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers including Germany.

Iran accused Sharmahd, who lived in Glendora, California, of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people — including five women and a child — and wounded over 200 others, as well as plotting other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.

Iran also accused Sharmahd of “disclosing classified information” on missile sites of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard during a television program in 2017.

His family disputed the allegations and had worked for years to see him freed.

Iran pushed back against Germany’s protests. Araghchi wrote Tuesday on social network X that “a German passport does not provide impunity to anyone, let alone a terrorist criminal.”

He accused Baerbock of “gaslighting” and wrote that “your government is accomplice in the ongoing Israeli genocide.” Germany is a staunch ally of Israel and has sharply criticized Iranian attacks on Israel as tensions spiral over the wars in Gaza and Lebanon.

The closure of consulates, a diplomatic tool Germany seldom uses, signals a major downgrade to diplomatic relations Baerbock said were “already at more than a low point.” Last year, Berlin told Russia to close four of the five consulates it then had in Germany after Moscow set a limit for the number of staff at the German Embassy and related bodies in Russia.

Iran's government “knows above all the language of blackmail, threat and violence,” Baerbock said Thursday. “The latest comments by the Iranian foreign minister, in which he puts the cold-blooded murder of Jamshid Sharmahd in the context of German support for Israel, also speak for themselves.”
“We repeatedly made unmistakably clear to Tehran that the execution of a German citizen would have serious consequences,” said Baerbock, adding that the cases of Germans held in Iran were a “central part” of a meeting she held with Araghchi in New York a month ago.
She said Berlin will continue with “tireless work” to get an unspecified number of other Germans released.