JNS: Two days before a Syrian surface-to-air missile flew into southern Israel in response to reported Israeli airstrikes on targets in the Damascus area, two suspicious Iranian cargo planes landed at Damascus International Airport, likely carrying advanced weapons, a former IDF intelligence officer has told JNS.
“And behold at eveningtide trouble; and before the morning he is not. This is the portion of them that spoil us, and the lot of them that rob us.” Isaiah 17:14
Early on Thursday morning, international media reports said that the Israeli Air Force hit a number of unknown targets in Syria, which triggered a Syrian SA-5 surface-to-air missile battery to fire on the Israeli aircraft.
Maj. (res.) Tal Beeri, director of the research department at the Alma research center, which uses open-source material to shed light on security threats to Israel emanating from Syria and Lebanon, spent 20 years in IDF intelligence specializing in Lebanon and Syria. He said that according to online public flight-tracking programs, the Iranian cargo planes landed at the Damascus airport on April 20.
“Those who follow Iranian cargo planes movements from Iran to Damascus are not surprised by airstrikes that follow them,” he said. “We don’t know what the specific target of the Israeli strike was, but I am certainly linking it to the arrival of the cargo planes,” added Beeri.
During the reported attack, as in many previous Israeli strikes, Syrian air-defense missile batteries launched interceptor missiles. Read More
