Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been barring Iran for three years now from retaliating to Israeli raids on Syria to avert an escalation, reported Israel’s Haaretz.
Assad reportedly made the order directly to Iran’s slain Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani and it has largely held.
Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport in January 2020.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria to prevent Iran’s entrenchment there. Tehran has not retaliated, both directly or indirectly, through its armed factions in the unoccupied parts of the Golan Heights.
The New York Times had last week confirmed that Assad has been barring Iran from responding to Israeli attacks.
Haaretz elaborated, saying the Syrians do not want an attack against Israel to be launched from its territories because they fear the eruption of a widescale war that would further weaken a country that is already suffering from years of conflict.
Iranian militias have consequently opted to target American bases in Syria with the hope that that would prompt Washington to pressure Israel to stop its raids.
After Soleiman’s killing, Assad issued the same instruction to his successor Esmail Qaani, said Haaretz.
The report was released two days after a purported Israeli strike on Aleppo airport in northern Syria.
The attack Wednesday night on Aleppo International Airport came 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.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mikdad said Thursday Israel was “playing with fire” and risking igniting a widescale military conflict.
Israel does not usually comment on its strikes on Syria, but it has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of attacks on Iran-backed groups there. It has also struck arms shipments to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
