Watch | Why is the Israel- Iran shadow war escalating?

| Video Credit:
Thamodaran B.

Even during the second world war, attacks on diplomatic missions were unheard of. According to the The 1961 Vienna Convention, embassy and consular premises should be protected even in times of war. But on April 1, Monday, an annex of Iran’s embassy in Damascus, the Syrian capital, came under air strikes.

At least 13 Iranians, including General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, the Quds Force commander who was in charge of the Revolutionary Guards’ Syria operations, were killed in the attack.

There’s no price in guessing who is behind the attack. Iran immediately blames Israel. Israel neither confirms nor rejects that it’s carrying out air strikes in Syria. But it’s now an open secret. A few days earlier, Israel had attacked a weapons depot in northern Syria, killing at least 38 Syrian soldiers and half a dozen Hezbollah fighters. A day after the embassy attack, Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant said, “We are in a multi-front war, offensively and defensively. We are acting everywhere and every day to prevent the strengthening of our enemies.”

Editorial | Escalation ladder: On Israel’s offensive, and the danger ahead

The recent spell of the crisis began on October 7, when Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist group that has Iran’s backing, carried out a cross-border attack in Israel, killing at at least 1,200 people. Since then, Israel has carried out dozens of air strikes in Syria and Lebanon, besides its full-throttled invasion of the Strip, hitting Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah targets.

Israeli security forces and emergency services cordon off the area as smoke rises from a house in the northern city of Kiryat Shmona after being reportedly hit by a rocket from Lebanon on October 29, 2023, amid increasing cross-border tensions. Persistent rocket and artillery exchanges with Lebanon’s militant group Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions across Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria have raised fears of a new front in Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israel’s Army said Monday it carried out air strikes on military infrastructure inside Syria as fears grow that its war against Hamas could spur a broader regional conflict.

“A short time ago, an IDF fighter jet attacked the launchers” from where overnight attacks originated towards Israeli territory, the military said, indicating it hit “military infrastructure in Syrian territory”.

The Army did not provide more details, but public broadcaster Kan News said the strikes hit near the southern city of Daraa.

Syria’s Defence Ministry said Monday Israel struck at around 1:35 a.m. (2235 GMT) “from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting two positions of our armed forces in the Daraa countryside, causing some material losses”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Israel targeted “an artillery battalion” in Daraa province, in response to shelling on the nearby occupied Golan Heights.

The Britain-based Observatory, which has a vast network of sources in Syria, said Hezbollah-linked Syrian and Palestinian groups were behind rocket attacks from the Daraa area.

Concerns are growing about the regional fallout from Israel’s war on Gaza’s Hamas rulers.

Since the fighting began, there has been a string of attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria as well as increasing exchanges of fire along the Israel-Lebanon border between the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia and Israeli forces.

Late Sunday, the Israeli military said it was striking “Hezbollah terrorist targets in Lebanon” in response to rocket fire.

Cross-border exchanges with Hezbollah have become an almost daily occurrence since October 7, when Hamas militants stormed over the Gaza border into southern Israel, killing some 1,400 people, mostly civilians, and seizing nearly 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Since then, Israel has responded with an unrelenting bombardment of Gaza, which the Hamas-run health ministry says has killed more than 8,000 people, nearly half of them children.

Violence on the Israel-Lebanon border has killed at least 62 people in Lebanon according to an AFP tally — 47 of them Hezbollah fighters but also including four civilians, one a Reuters journalist.

Israeli officials have reported at least four deaths, including one civilian.

Nearly 29,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon due to the skirmishes, according to the International Organization for Migration.