Israeli airstrikes have killed significant numbers of Syrian soldiers since Israel intensified its air campaign against Iran in Syria last October. However, even before this intensification, periodic Israeli and, to a lesser extent, Turkish strikes have killed soldiers of the Syrian Army on several occasions over the past decade.
Aron Lund, a Syria expert and fellow with Century International, discussed these two air campaigns, why they are repeatedly killing and wounding Syrian soldiers, how they have intensified in recent months, and why the government in Damascus hasn’t retaliated.
Israel’s intensified air campaign
On Mar. 29, a suspected Israeli airstrike on Aleppo killed 36 Syrian soldiers, the largest number killed in a single Israeli strike since Israel began its air campaign over a decade ago. Less than two weeks earlier, Israeli airstrikes against several targets in southern Syria injured a soldier.
Lund outlined how Israel has stepped up an “already pretty intense” air campaign in Syria following the unprecedented Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. Israel began its campaign in 2013, in the early years of the Syrian Civil War, to target suspected arms shipments, warehouses, and production facilities it suspected Iran was using to arm Hezbollah with advanced weaponry.
“The pace of attacks increased significantly around 2017, apparently because the Israeli government decided, in that year, to widen the target set to include Iran’s military presence in Syria more generally,” Lund told me.
“The attacks then intensified gradually, with bolder strikes against airports and ports happening occasionally,” he said. “But after Oct. 7, it’s even more intense. Attacks happen more often against more sensitive targets.”
Lund noted that Israel killed a lot of Syrian troops in these strikes, many of whom he suspects are guards who had the “misfortune” of being at the site of the attacks, which typically occur late at night.
“Iranian and Lebanese personnel will operate at Syrian military facilities since Syria is the host country for this whole thing,” he said. “It’s not like the Iranians have their own country-wide archipelago of special non-Syrian areas. They’re treaty allies, and whatever is happening happens inside and around the Syrian military system.”
Facilities of the Scientific Studies and Research Center, SSRC, have come under repeated Israeli bombing. The Defense Ministry body is responsible for developing and manufacturing missiles, drones, and chemical weapons. Lund specified that Israel bombed military-industrial plants at Sfeira, south of Aleppo, and a “set of hardened, part-underground mystery installations” in the coastal mountains.
In the months preceding Oct. 7, there were numerous reports of Syrian troops being killed or injured by Israeli strikes. For example, a strike near Homs last April left five Syrian soldiers wounded. Another strike in July near the capital Damascus injured two more. A subsequent attack near Damascus the following month killed at least four and left another four wounded. And, in September, Israeli air attacks on Syria’s western coastal region killed two soldiers and injured six others.
It was amidst these pre-Oct. 7 strikes that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad claimed Israel’s air campaign was primarily targeting his armed forces, not Iran or its numerous militias.
“The Israeli attacks are mainly directed against the Syrian Army,” he claimed in August. “It’s an excuse that it’s an Iranian presence.”
Lund dismissed these comments as “disinformation” or Assad’s way of “denying” Israel’s claims of Iranian entrenchment in Syria.
“If Israel were primarily out to weaken the Syrian government generally or degrade the military as a whole, they could bomb many other things instead of focusing on these particular targets,” he said. “While there’s a lot that remains unknown about what the Israelis are doing, it seems clear that their primary concern is to reduce the supply of precision weaponry for Hezbollah and the Iran-Hezbollah infrastructure in Syria.”
At the same time, Lund believes Israel may be taking actions to “pressure Assad,” such as knocking out Syrian air defenses to maintain its freedom of action over the country and “grind down the SSRC.”
While that might well be the case, the main objective of the air campaign is focused on a “very particular set of Syrian installations that enable Iran-Hezbollah activities” in the region rather than an “all-out campaign” against Syria.
Turkey’s concurrent campaign in the north
Turkey has carried out intermittent airstrikes on Syrian soil since 2016. Some of these strikes have also killed or injured Syrian troops.
For example, a Turkish drone strike killed two Syrian soldiers and injured four south of Qamishli in northeast Syria in January. Last June, a Turkish drone killed five troops and severely wounded six more in the northern countryside of Aleppo. Turkish airstrikes across north Syria killed at least 12 Syrian soldiers in November 2022. An earlier Turkish airstrike killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded another six in the Aleppo countryside in August 2022.
Turkey has also intensified airstrikes against Kurdish-led forces in northeast Syria since October. However, these strikes have very different overall goals than Israel’s.
Lund emphasized that Turkey isn’t “primarily hitting Syrian troops” but is focusing on attacking the Syrian Democratic Forces in the country’s northeast. The main component of the SDF is the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, which Turkey argues is indistinct from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the PKK.
“Since last year, they’ve also increasingly been hitting civilian infrastructure, like power installations and water plants,” Lund said. “It’s presumably just another way to do the same thing: deliver damage, build leverage, and harm the SDF’s relationship with civilian populations.”
While the SDF is the primary target of this air campaign, Syrian troops can also find themselves under Turkish fire.
“In some areas of northern Syria, the SDF operates alongside or behind Syrian army lines, which may also include a light presence of Russian observers and patrols,” Lund said. “Russia has promised Turkey to remove PKK elements from the SDF in those areas, just like the United States did earlier. To Turkey’s chagrin, that hasn’t happened.”
The complex status quo originated in a series of “panicked deals” made after former President Donald Trump declared he was withdrawing U.S. troops from northeast Syria in 2019, a move that saw that region collapse into “spheres of influence” that had existed prior.
“Trump ultimately reversed his withdrawal decision, but not before Russian, American, Assad regime, and Kurdish positions had become really tangled up,” Lund said. “Since then, northern Syria has had these overlapping zones of unclear control.”
“The only area that doesn’t suffer these confused arrangements is the Turkish-dominated rebel zones,” he added. “But they’re a mess in their own right, full of competing rebel factions and unruly minor warlords.”
Some Syrian troops stationed in or around areas primarily controlled by the SDF are sometimes killed by Turkish fire.
“It may be accidental, or it may be that Turkey just doesn’t care who waves which flag if they’re protecting an enemy position,” Lund said. “I suspect the Turks also hit Syrian troops on purpose every now and then as a way to communicate their displeasure to Russia. It’s similar to how Russia will sometimes bomb rebel-held areas in Idlib to get Turkey’s attention.”
More generally, he speculated that some of Syria’s “constant low-level chaos” might be Moscow, Ankara, and Damascus “moving pawns on a chessboard” or even local gangs “getting into fights over loot” and drawing in their “external patrons” in the process.
“The Syrian war is like that,” Lund said. “It’s messy and opaque down on ground level and just as messy and opaque up in the diplomatic stratosphere.”
Retaliation
Despite all of these attacks, Syria has never retaliated, at least not directly. Following some of the earliest Israeli strikes in 2013, Assad publicly vowed to retaliate against any future ones, saying Damascus would have “a strategic response.” Eleven years later, and Damascus still hasn’t done so.
“I don’t think the Syrian government will respond to the killing of its troops by targeting either Israel or Turkey,” Lund said. “They’ve been saying for years that they reserve the right to respond to Israeli airstrikes at a time and place of their choosing. I think by now, everyone has concluded that the time of their choosing is ‘never.’ The Syrian government is way too weak to get into a shooting war with Israel.”
Furthermore, in Lund’s estimation, Syria won’t retaliate directly against Turkish attacks. The most it would likely do is target Turkish-occupied areas in Syria, which would likely kill fighters and civilians rather than any Turks.
“To go toe to toe with Turkey, they would need Russia at their back,” Lund said. “Russia does not seem to be keen on conflict with Turkey at the moment.”
“There may occasionally be moments when Assad’s troops take a gamble and fire on Turkish positions without Russian approval or when Russia seeks out a clash with the Turks,” he added. “But I think that’s rare.”
In addition to not responding directly to Israeli attacks, Damascus reportedly told its Iran-backed militia allies not to use Syrian territory to attack Israel to avoid the possibility of an all-out war. That was in 2022. There have been militiaattacks against Israel from Syria since Oct. 7.
“I doubt the Iranians or Iran-backed groups would be firing at Israel from Syria without a nod of approval from Damascus,” Lund said.
“Of course, it could be that Assad feels compelled to green-light more Iran-engineered militant action than he’d ideally want to see happening,” he added. “He depends on Iran, and his bargaining position isn’t great.”
On the other hand, Lund doesn’t rule out the possibility that Assad is willing to take significant risks to help Iran and Hezbollah since he is part of the alliance trying to save Hamas and Gaza.
“They’re all on the same side, and they all want to come out of this conflict together as winners,” he said. “Last but not least, green-lighting some drone attacks could be seen as a way to retaliate after Israeli strikes, even if it’s not very effective.”
Lund also noted that militia attacks from Syria against Israel have been “so few and so limited” that they are more “exceptions from the rule.”
“There’s a general rule that Syria will facilitate attacks from Lebanon but will not be a base for attacks across the Golan Heights. It still holds, more or less,” he said.
“But over time, the risk of escalation may grow, and if war were to break out between Israel and Hezbollah, it would be very difficult for Syria to stay out of it.”
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