Iran's allies in Golan tread cautiously to protect Syria's value as front against Israel

Attacks on occupied territory have been limited to avoid a severe reaction that would impair Tehran's ability to supply Hezbollah

Smoke rises in the Israel-occupied Golan Heights after rockets were fired from Lebanon about two weeks ago. Reuters

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For the past six years, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have woven a network of allied militias and upgraded military sites in southern Syria, opposite Israeli troops occupying the Golan Heights.

The Iranian proxies, which have formed a front in Quneitra and Deraa provinces, have launched several attacks on Israeli targets from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria since the Gaza war began last October.

Hezbollah, in particular, has launched near-daily rocket and drone attacks into northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights.

Yet, on Sunday, when Hezbollah mounted what it described as its most intense attack on Israel so far – to avenge the killing of its senior commander Fouad Shukr – not a single rocket was fired at the Golan Heights from Deraa or Quneitra, according to Syrian opposition sources monitoring the front from Amman.

This is despite claims by the Lebanese armed group that it launched attacks on the occupied territory on Sunday as a decoy that would allow it to strike more sensitive targets deep inside Israel. There were no reported casualties and apparent substantial damage from the attacks.

“Not a single Israeli soldier in the Golan was harmed, not even a scratch,” said a reconnaissance specialist in the opposition.

The apparent restraint follows reports in Arab and US media that Syria's President Bashar Al Assad's regime has sent messages to the West that its military will not be involved in any regional war.

The risk of such a conflict rose after Hezbollah and Iran vowed vengeance against Israel for the killings in July of Mr Shukr in Beirut and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

The Assad regime's stance fits in with the strategic role Iran has envisaged for Syria, another opposition figure said.

Syrian areas under Tehran's influence are the main routes for supplying weapons to Hezbollah, while the country also serves as “a kitchen for Iran: A weapons laboratory and development centre”, the opposition member told The National.

Convoys, storage depots and other components of the weapons supply line – including Syrian army communications and personnel – in the Golan Heights and elsewhere in Syria, have faced hundreds of Israeli air strikes over the past decade in a campaign well short of a sustained offensive.

“If Assad does more, let us say he orders what remains of his artillery near the Golan to fire on the Israelis, Syria would could come under massive Israeli attacks that would erode its logistical value,” the opposition member said.

Veteran Syrian political commentator Ayman Abel Nour expects Mr Al Assad to try to capitalise on this position once the Gaza war ends, when it is expected that more western countries will seek to reconnect with Damascus.

This will allow him to claim credit for limiting Iran's multipronged regional front in southern Syria while, at the same time, maintaining his country's position as a corridor for Tehran, Mr Abdel Nour told The National.

“The regime will always have a card in its hand when dealing with Hezbollah because it is dependent on Syria for supplies,” he said.

The Golan front was dormant for decades when the Syrian side of the occupied territory was solely under the control of Damascus – and remained so for several years after Syria's civil war began in 2011.

Syria has since been fragmented into Iranian, Russian, Turkish and US zones of influence, with Iran operating mainly through an amalgamation of local and foreign military proxies.

In 2018, areas near the Golan Heights that had been captured by rebels were turned over into the government's control after a deal between Russia, the US and Israel.

However, Iran-aligned auxiliaries soon established a presence there that Israel has been unable to dislodge, despite numerous strikes that have killed dozens of IRGC officers, Hezbollah commanders and Syrian officers suspected of acting as liaisons between Mr Al Assad's military and these groups.

These auxiliaries have played a key role in carving out a contiguous Iranian zone that stretches from Albu Kamal, near the border with Iraq in eastern Syria, to the Lebanese border and, since 2018, to the nearby Golan Heights – a strategic plateau that borders Israel, Lebanon and Jordan.

Israel captured the territory in the 1967 war, gaining a rugged buffer between Arab countries and the Galilee, and a commanding position over Damascus.

A UN-supervised disengagement line was established in 1974, a year after Hafez Al Assad, Syrian president at the time, launched a failed war to recapture the area.

However, Iran's presence in the front has increased its “circle of fire” against Israel, a term attributed to the IRGC's Quds Force commander Gen Qassem Suleimani, who was assassinated in 2020.

Gen Suleimani and Mr Shukr were architects of Iran's consolidation of power in Syria.

Mr Shukr was in charge of Hezbollah's deployment, which has become stealthier and more confined to the back lines since October after commanders of the group and the IRGC increasingly became targets of Israeli strikes near the Golan Heights and in other areas of Syria, the opposition sources said.

This left other Iran proxies in Syria to do the heavy lifting, such as firing occasional rockets against Israeli targets in occupied territory, which rarely caused any significant damage.

One rocket that killed of 12 Druze civilians in a Golan Heights town was fired from Lebanon, Israel said. The attack prompted its assassination of Mr Shukr days later.

Hezbollah's response, which finally came in the form of a barrage of rocket and drone attacks on Sunday, turned out to be a brief escalation, alleviating fears an uncontrolled regional spillover of the Gaza war.

The war continues amid increasing moves in Europe to accommodate Damascus, despite its support for militant groups.

Diplomats said the refugee crisis the continent is battling could soon prompt more European nations to follow in the steps of Italy – governed by a coalition led by far-right nationalists – which appointed an ambassador to Damascus last month.

One western envoy said that even leftist and centrist European leaders were warming to the view that reconnecting with Mr Al Assad could neutralise domestic political rivals on the right, who also want to join forces with him, and result in the return of Syrian refugees from the civil war.

Mr Al Assad, the envoy said, could be helping the rehabilitation of his image in Europe by keeping his army out of the Gaza conflict and staying within “US parameters” – diplomatic and military moves set out by Washington that have contributed to preventing a full-blown regional war.

The Syrian leader was widely ostracised after his regime used force to suppress the March 2011 uprising against his rule.

A Jordanian source who regularly meets Syrian officials in Damascus said part of Hezbollah's calculated response on Sunday was to avoid a severe Israeli reaction against Mr Al Assad.

“Hezbollah wanted to save face,” he said. “Had Syria been involved, the Israeli response would have been very painful.”