Exactly 10 years ago, on Sept. 6, 2007, a mysterious airstrike destroyed a military complex in the Deir ez-Zor region in eastern Syria. Soon after, foreign media outlets reported the target was a suspected nuclear facility built by Syrian President Bashar Assad. No country has ever officially claimed responsibility for the strike, but media worldwide and even then-U.S. President George W. Bush's administration attributed the strike to Israel. Only Israeli media remained mum on the issue. In 2008, New Yorker magazine reported that Israel's Mossad intelligence agency learned of Syria's intentions to build a nuclear facility with assistance from North Korea, after getting hold of a laptop belonging to Ibrahim Othman, then-head of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission, that included, among other classified files, the facility's schematics and photos of the construction site. The evidence was clear, but Israel continued to gather intelligence via covert operations, keeping the Americans informed of its findings. It took time for Israel to produce the proverbial smoking gun that removed any doubt the Americans may have had about the Syrian activity and convinced Washington the facility must be destroyed. According to the New Yorker, the night of the attack saw then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi convene at the military's high command situation room in the IDF's headquarters in Tel Aviv, as did then-Defense and Foreign ministers Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni and the members of the General Staff, to follow the operation as it unfolded. According to foreign media reports, 10 Israeli F-15I fighter jets participated in the strike, which involved highly sophisticated electronic warfare to dupe Syrian air defenses. The IAF used precision-guided missiles, destroying the reactor within minutes. The next day, Syrian state media falsely reported that the country's air defenses warded off an Israeli strike in Syria's northeast and forced Israeli jets to turn back, dropping munitions in the desert. Israel and Syria both refrained from making any official statements about the strike, and according to the New Yorker, Israel's early assessments turned out to be true: Assad felt safe enough in the plausible deniability sphere Israel allowed him with its silence to contain the incident and refrained from mounting a military response. It is important to remember that 10 years ago, Israel perceived Syria as a real military threat, and the military geared for possible war with Syria's military, which had substantial ground and air capabilities. A decade later, the situation in the north is completely different: Six and a half years of bloody civil war have all but destroyed Assad's army and it can no longer be defined as a significant threat to the IDF. The defense establishment believes it would take Assad years to rehabilitate his army. Lebanon, on the other hand, has become a substantial, first-circle threat with which the IDF must contend. The 11-day military exercise launched near the northern border Monday follows a scenario by which the cabinet orders the IDF to decisively defeat Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based Shiite terrorist group, and not on war with Syria, all while taking into consideration that there are currently thousands of Hezbollah operatives in Syria, fighting alongside Assad's troops. The defense establishment believes the next northern campaign would not involve Hezbollah solely, but would rather entail multiple fronts. Since the 2007 strike, foreign media have attributed dozens of airstrikes on weapon convoys to Hezbollah to Israel. Israel reluctantly acknowledged only one strike, after the Arrow defense system intercepted Syrian anti-aircraft missile fired at Israeli fighter jets flying in Syrian skies. Tensions on Israel's borders with Syria and Lebanon have increased recently over Iran's effort to build weapon manufacturing facilities in Lebanon and entrench itself militarily in Syria. The defense establishment's intelligence suggests that unless something is done, those weapon manufacturing facilities will become operational in the foreseeable future, something Israel said will "cross a red line." Top defense officials have made it publicly clear that Israel will not tolerate Iranian military presence in Lebanon and Syria. One can only hope that this time as well, the issue will be resolved diplomatically rather than via a full-scale military conflict.
