Naftali Bennett: Israel Will Force Iran from Syria
Israel’s Defense Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday said the military had progressed from blocking Iran’s presence in Syria to moving it out entirely.
Bennett said the IDF would not stop taking military action against Iranian forces in Syria until they leave the country.
“We have moved from blocking Iran’s entrenchment in Syria to forcing it out of there, and we will not stop,” the defense minister said in a statement.
“We will not allow more strategic threats to grow just across our borders without taking action,” he said.
He made similar comments two days earlier, ahead of an alleged Israeli airstrike on an Iranian base outside Damascus.
“Keep your ears open. We’ve gone from a policy of blocking [Iran] to pushing it out,” Bennett told the 103FM radio station on Sunday according to remarks translated by The Times of Israel.
The strike, on the Mezzeh military airport in a suburb outside the capital, killed four members of a pro-Iran militia and three civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
However, according to Syrian state news agency SANA, whose reliability is questionable at best, some damage was caused by the strikes on the building but there were no casualties.
SANA also reported Syrian air defense shot down the Israeli projectiles.
The airbase, said to be used by Iranian forces in Syria, has been targeted several times in alleged Israeli airstrikes.
Monday’s bombing raid was the third such attack in Syria attributed to Israel in the past 10 days.
Last week, Syria accused Israel of carrying out airstrikes on targets near Homs in the center of the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor later said the targets were “military posts for Iranian militias in the Palmyra desert.”
The raids killed nine fighters, including six foreigners and some militants connected to the Iranian-proxy Hezbollah group.
Photo: GIL COHEN MAGEN/AFP/Getty
