While the U.S. has at last taken on Iran’s proxy in Yemen, Iran’s proxy in Lebanon continues to attack the Jewish state: yesterday, Hizballah fired an antitank missile at a house, killing a seventy-six-year-old civilian and her son. The same day, the IDF thwarted an attempted cross-border raid from Lebanon. Jerusalem, meanwhile, is continuing its efforts to undermine Tehran’s terror network in Syria, which have been going on for more than a decade.
This campaign has so far operated according to unwritten “rules of the game,” whereby both sides respect certain red lines, keeping retaliation from spinning out of control. Since October 7, Israel has gotten bolder, according to the Tal Avraham and Carmit Valensi, “attacking weapons transfers and strategic targets more frequently and in a deadlier manner,” and sometimes breaking the rules:
The most powerful operation attributed to Israel so far took place on December 25, when Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Damascus who was entrusted with the transfer of weapons from Iran to Syria and Lebanon, was killed. . . . Attacking him means attacking Iran, which so far has not paid the price for operating its agents against Israel.
So far, except for a few UAV launches attributed to pro-Iranian militias in Syria or Iraq, the attacks attributed to Israel in Syria have not been met with significant responses by the [Iran-led] axis. The considerations of Syria’s President Assad are clear—he is not interested in dragging Syria into a widescale war, which could also endanger his position. So far the Iranian leadership and Hizballah have accepted this and refrained from responding from his territory.
In other words, Jerusalem’s boldness has paid off.
Read more on Institute for National Security Studies: https://www.inss.org.il/social_media/october-7-changed-the-rules-of-the-game-in-the-syrian-arena-as-well/