On the Northern Front, Israel Attacks a Multitude of Targets

The IDF has been very busy on Israel’s northern front. It has warned Hezbollah that if the Lebanese terror group continues firing rockets and missiles into Israel, and kills Israelis, the IDF is quite prepared to “turn Beirut into Gaza.” Meanwhile it continues to disrupt Hezbollah operations, and to damage its links, both material and human, to Syria and to Iran.

Here’s a brief summary of the attacks carried out, just in the last week of December, by the IDF in Lebanon and Syria.

“Israel kills Iranians, proxies in Syria in 2 strikes – report,” Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2023:

Multiple airstrikes by Israel reportedly killed between 17-19 Iranians and Iranian-proxies in Syria and at the Syria-Iraq border over the weekend.

In a very rare case, the air force purportedly killed at least six Iran-backed terrorists at the Syria-Iraq border, two members of Iraqi militia groups told The Associated Press on Saturday….

Hours before the Associated Press report, the Hezbollah terrorist organization announced that four operatives within their ranks were killed by Israeli attacks around the same time, which states that they were among the six that were killed in eastern Syria. The other two were reportedly Syrian fighters, the Iraqi militia members said.

Arab media also reported that airstrikes were carried out against sites identified with pro-Iranian militias in the Boukamal region of Syria near the Iraq border. Some of the reports, such as the Lebanese source Al-Mayadeen, state that the airstrikes have been attributed to Israel.

The attacks hit a weapons depot, a militants’ convoy that had arrived from Iraq to Syria, and a training complex belonging to the pro-Iranian militia, according to The Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, which states that the number killed at the border is actually nine, saying that three of them were Syrian nationals. The organization also said that the “death toll is likely to increase due to the presence of more than 27 injured members of the militias.”…

The Associated Press report stated that the attack on the border came hours after an “umbrella group of Iran-backed Iraqi militants — known as the Islamic Resistance — claimed an attack on a US military base in the city of Irbil in northern Iraq.” The militant group has conducted attacks on over 100 US positions in Iraq and eastern Syria since the start of the Israel-Hamas war….

“IDF strikes Hezbollah terror targets in southern Lebanese stronghold,” Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2023:

Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck Hezbollah terror infrastructure in the southern Lebanese village of Kafr Kila, the IDF announced on Saturday evening [Dec. 30].

The operation had two extensive periods of strikes throughout Saturday, targeting numerous Hezbollah targets in the village, which the IDF noted is a Hezbollah stronghold….

These reports come only days after Iran announced that Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a senior commander in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was responsible for coordinating between the IRGC and Syria, was killed in an Israeli attack in Damascus.

“Senior IRGC Officers Reportedly Killed In Israeli Attack In Syria,” Iran International, December 29, 2023:

Saudi and Israeli media reported on Friday [Dec. 29] that 11 senior officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed in the Thursday [Dec. 28] Israeli air strike on Damascus airport.

According to Al Arabiya sources, the targeted IRGC members, responsible for overseeing Iran-backed forces in eastern Syria, were at the airport to welcome a senior delegation. IRGC spokesman Ramezan Sharif denied the report on Friday without providing any details.

One of the IRGC commanders in Syria, Major General Gholam-Ali Rashid Ali-Nour, was also injured in the airstrike, Saudi media channel Al-Hadath reported….

Earlier this week, the IRGC confirmed that one of its top commanders in Syria, Brig. Gen. Razi Mousavi, was killed in an Israeli “missile attack.”…

“Syria’s Aleppo airport struck in alleged Israeli airstrike, damage caused,” by Yuval Barnea, Jerusalem Post, December 30, 2023:

The Aleppo International Airport in Syria was struck on Saturday afternoon [Dec. 30] in an alleged Israeli airstrike, according to Syrian media….

“Three civilians were martyred and two wounded as a result of the Israeli aggression that targeted the farms of the village of Al-Dhahabiya in the southern countryside of Aleppo,” Lebanese news site Al Mayadeen reported.

On Friday [Dec.29], airstrikes hit buildings and an eight-truck convoy used by pro-Iran militias in the Syrian border town of Albukamal near a border crossing to Iraq.

A commander from the Iraqi Shiite Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) said that four people were killed in the strikes, according to Reuters.

However, the same commander denied that any PMF troops had been killed in the strike.

Members of the PMF accused America of bombing the town and killing 5, including some Lebanese nationals.

A US military official told Reuters that the US did not conduct any defensive strikes overnight.

Even as the IDF continues to grind down Hamas, so far killing at least 9,000 Hamas operatives and destroying more than 600 tunnels of the 900 it has uncovered in Gaza, it is also running on all cylinders on its northern front. Within the last four days of December, the IDF managed to bomb both the Damascus and the Aleppo airports, causing enough destruction to make it impossible for Iranian planes, delivering weapons to Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian militias, to land. In the attack on the Damascus Airport, the IDF airstrikes also killed 11 senior commanders of the IRGC, a terrific blow both to the Revolutionary Guards’ ability to operate, and to its morale.

On Dec. 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the nation. He gave this warning — not for the first time — to Hezbollah and its backer Iran. “Netanyahu says war against Hamas in Gaza will continue for months, warns Hezbollah and Iran,” Times of Israel, December 30, 2023:

…The premier stresses he is also committed to restoring security along the northern border amid repeated Hezbollah attacks, so the residents who were evacuated from there can return home.

He also declares, “If Hezbollah widens the fighting, it will absorb strikes it never dreamed of. And so, too, Iran,” he says.

“We will fight by all means until we have restored security for the residents of the north.”

Iran leads the “axis of evil” and the aggression against Israel “on the various fronts,” he says, and threatens the entire free world….

There are those who thought that the IDF would be so tied down in Gaza that it would be unable to deal adequately with the threat posed by both Hezbollah and its paymaster Iran, on the Jewish state’s northern front. They can now see that they were wrong.