Masyaf attack: Did Israeli special forces raid key Syrian research site?

Iran has denied reports that some of its advisors were captured in an attack on a secretive weapons research centre

People inspect a damaged area in the aftermath of what Syrian state media reported was an Israeli strike in Masyaf. Reuters

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On Thursday, Israeli media reported that its special forces had completed a rare ground raid in Masyaf, about 240km north of Israel, in Syria.

Masyaf is a key Syrian weapons development site run by the government’s Scientific Studies and Research Centre. Israel has struck the complex in the past from the air, but analysts say parts of the facility are nearly impervious to air strikes, buried deep underground.

Some accounts said Iranian advisers had been captured, something Iran’s embassy in Damascus condemned as “lies”, adding that the raid “did not affect any Iranian advisers”.

Unnamed sources, speaking to US website Axios, told of commandos who rappelled from helicopters, a gun battle with guards, detonations in underground factories, and roads around the site being severed with air strikes. The latter was evidenced by pictures of cratered roads and several destroyed civilian cars near the scene. At least four civilians are thought to have died in these air strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz singled out the site as being a hard target due to underground structures in 2022, while the US has put scientists accused of working there on a sanctions list.

Little is known about the raid beyond videos on social media where residents recorded the sound of helicopters flying over Tartous that night. Syria has denied that a ground raid occurred, although it acknowledged air strikes in Masyaf that killed 26 people.

Syria has long been seen as a transit point for weapons technology sent by Iran to Lebanon's Hezbollah. Since 2013, Israel has conducted thousands of air strikes, hitting suspected weapons storage and convoys in Syria, in what analysts have sometimes called “the war between the wars”. Iranian advisers – including senior generals since the start of the October 7 Israel-Gaza war – have been the target of these strikes, as well as Hezbollah fighters.

A possible concern of Israel is Syria’s suspected continuing chemical weapons programme, following scores of such attacks launched by President Bashar Al Assad’s forces against rebel groups following the 2011 uprising and bloody civil war.

Syria’s declaration on the status of its chemical weapons stockpiles “still cannot be considered accurate and complete in accordance with the Chemical Weapons Convention”, the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons reported earlier this year.

Israel has struck suspected Syrian weapons of mass destruction sites in the past, at Masyaf in 2017 and a nuclear test reactor in Deir ez-Zour in 2007.

Why would Israel raid Masyaf?

Because Israel's air force has supremacy over Syria – losing only one F-16 to anti-aircraft fire in 2018, despite hundreds of missions – a ground raid could seem like an unnecessary risk.

“An Israeli special forces operation was most likely designed to secure intelligence and Iranian technicians,” Anthony Tucker-Jones, a former UK defence intelligence official and military historian, tells The National. “Israel is signalling that Iranians supporting Hamas and Hezbollah are not safe even when operating from Syria.”

Israel’s significant air capabilities point to the difficulty of justifying a ground raid. It has a variant of the massive 950kg BLU-109/B bunker buster bomb, which can smash through six metres of concrete with a hardened penetrator before exploding.

Iran, which has mastered the art of hardened structures deep underground to protect its nuclear programme, is thought to have assisted Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria in building these structures, possibly after help from North Korean engineers. Current tunnel structures and bunkers can be built at depths where bombs would need to be at least 2,000kg, but Israel lacks aircraft large enough to carry such weapons.

Frank Sobchak, a US special forces veteran and expert on special operations, agrees with Mr Tucker-Jones. He says Israel would probably only embark on a high-risk mission to achieve a goal that could not be met through a lower risk air strike or cyber attack. The latter could target Scientific Studies and Research Centre computers.

“It’s definitely a high-risk operation that, in my opinion, would require some form of in-flight refuelling of the helicopters at night,” he says. “It would not be unprecedented, but it would be risky and it would have to have some significant payoff for such a dangerous operation. I think it is feasible, both in terms of practicality and in terms of the Israeli army and government seeing that the gain could be worth the risk and cost to greenlight the mission.”

Long-range, low-level flying at night is high risk despite advances in modern technology. Refuelling of helicopters ended in disaster during a 1980 US special forces operation to rescue hostages in Iran, killing eight soldiers and ending the mission.

Mr Sobchak outlines how Israeli forces have made similar high-risk choices in the past.

In 1969, Israeli forces noticed that Egypt was using an advanced, Soviet-supplied radar system during clashes between the two sides, following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israeli commandos launched a raid, Operation Rooster, to capture the entire device and take it back to Israel using new CH-53 helicopters, in order to gain an intelligence edge in air operations.

“There have been other missions where the Israelis launched daring raids, Operation Rooster for example, to seize some important piece of equipment to study it and improve defences,” Mr Sobchak says. “Given that the target was involved in the drone and long-range precision missile programme, which assists Hezbollah, both of those would seem to be a potential high payoff, especially in light of Israel looking towards minimising casualties if a war with Hezbollah breaks out.”

Israel is still flying the long-range CH-53 helicopter, albeit highly modernised versions which maker Lockheed Martin says are “especially suited for combat search and rescue, special operations”. Mr Sobchak notes that the CH-53Ks the Israelis fly would be operating at the “extreme” of their safe range for a mission in Masyaf, giving little margin for error.

“The claim that two IRGC officers were captured is also interesting, although I would say I don't know how likely it is,” Mr Sobchak says. “Iranian PoWs could potentially be used in some sort of swap for hostages, although at some point it is almost certain that their status would have to be declared – which leads me to have doubts about that component of the story.”

High-stakes raid

Mr Sobchak highlights that such raids are a rarity. One small mistake – a helicopter malfunction, enemy forces anticipating the raid, or difficulty extracting casualties – can soon turn missions into disaster.

Operation Gothic Serpent in Somalia in 1993 ended in full-scale battle for elite US Army Rangers in Mogadishu, after a failed attempt to detain warlord Mohamed Farrah Aideed, who was accused of attacking UN peacekeepers.

The 160-strong raiding force ran into heavy resistance, thought to number more than 1,000 militiamen, and lost 18 soldiers in what could have been a massacre of the raiding force.

However, such high-risk, high-reward raids are nothing new, Mr Sobchak says. More than 1,000 soldiers, mostly Canadian, died in a doomed raid in Dieppe in 1942 that was designed to test German defences. Another raid, to destroy the dry dock of an advanced German warship in Saint Nazaire, also in 1942, succeeded with the loss of 169 commandos.

“Similar raids have certainly landed in disaster or turned out to be extremely costly. Dieppe, Mogadishu (Black Hawk Down), and I would even add Saint Nazaire, show that such raids can be terrible failures also.”