Israel’s Dangerous Shadow War With Iran
Foreign AffairsFeb 27, 2023
The Syrian ministry of defense and the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) have reported that Israel conducted air strikes on targets in Damascus early Thursday morning. State media reports said the Syrian air defenses were "confronting hostile targets," while loud explosions were heard over the capital.
According to SANA, an unidentified military official said that its air defence intercepted several missiles, but others caused material damage and wounded two soldiers.
Israel has been carrying out air strikes against suspected Iranian weapons transfers and personnel, as well as Tehran's proxies in Syria, for almost a decade and these tit-for-tat strikes are part of a low-intensity conflict intended, on the Israeli side, to slow Iran's growing entrenchment in Syria. The continuing pressure to escalate conflict created by the constancy of this shadow war has only been mitigated by Western attempts to foster diplomatic resolutions between the nations, but with the Biden administration's commitment to this strategy under question, a lethal escalation of force between Israel and Iran could be coming into focus .
Syria is a conflict zone with many actors, any of which could cause this "shadow war" to go hot. Currently, Iran — with its coordinated efforts alongside Russia, which controls much of the Syrian airspace — risks pushing this conflict over the edge. Israel has been clear that it will not permit Iran to freely move weapons and fighters through Syria if such activities threaten Israeli security, and that it is justified in targeting Iranian assets in any of the countries into which Tehran has dug its tentacles.
There is a 15% chance that a state-based conflict between Israel and Iran will cause at least 1K deaths before 2025, according to the Metaculus prediction community.