Iran plotting fresh offensive on Israel’s northern border

TEL AVIV – Iranian officers working with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization and Syrian troops are planning a major, imminent offensive to secure control of Syria’s border with Israel on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.

The offensive aims to secure villages at the center of the Golan Heights, including the border town of Quneitra, which leads to a main road that goes all the way to Damascus.

Quneitra is a strategic, largely unpopulated town along the demilitarized United Nations Disengagement Observer Force Zone that serves as a buffer between Syria and Israel. The town is located just across from Israeli territory.

Currently, Quneitra is a no-mans land that is sporadically under the control of insurgents fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The planned Iranian-backed offensive is less about Iran’s efforts against Israel and more about securing strategic territory for Assad’s regime with the aim of resisting rebels on multiple fronts, Middle Eastern defense officials told WND.

Last month, a U.K.-based human rights organization stated Hezbollah and Iranian forces were leading a counterinsurgency targeting rebel strongholds in Quneitra.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Hezbollah-Iran axis was also leading battles against Islamist insurgents in Daraa, at the Jordan-Israel border and along the southwest of Damascus province.

The offensive was reportedly largely a failure for Iran, with the Iranian-led forces unable to gain much territory.

WND in January was first to report that according to Mideast defense officials, Hezbollah and Iran were planning an imminent counterinsurgency against rebel-held positions inside and near the Syrian sections of the Golan Heights aimed at taking the strategic border territory.

Now Mideast defense officials say the Iranian-backed axis is plotting another counterinsurgency, including in the Golan.

While the immediate battle plan included bolstering Assad’s regime, the officials say Iran could also use any gained territory to threaten Israel in the future, including with ballistic missiles or Iranian-backed guerrilla raids targeting Jewish communities on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights.

Earlier this week, Syrian forces battled insurgents in the Syrian cities of Lattakia, the biggest Syrian port city; the western province of Homs; and Aleppo, the largest Syrian city.

Last month, amid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

reports of the Iran-led offensive in the Golan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Iran was seeking to open a “third front” against Israel using Hezbollah fighters in the north.

“Alongside Iran’s direct guidance of Hezbollah’s actions in the north and Hamas’s in the south, Iran is trying also to develop a third front on the Golan Heights via the thousands of Hezbollah fighters who are in southern Syria and over which Iran holds direct command,” Netanyahu told a parliamentary cabinet meeting.

Netanyahu said cabinet ministers were to be briefed on “the security challenges developing around us, first and foremost Iran’s attempt to increase its foothold on Israel’s borders even as it works to arm itself with nuclear weapons.”

 

 
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