Reported israeli strike on Damascus
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00:00 Let's go back to the story about the alleged Israeli strike on a building in Damascus and
00:04 try to speak again with our guest Joseph Bout from the American University of Beirut.
00:07 Hello to you.
00:08 I'm just wondering, since the war in Gaza has Israel's strikes in Syria, have those
00:15 changed?
00:16 In fact, the strike that occurred this morning is both a continuity of something that we
00:22 have been witnessing for years now over Syria, but there's also some new elements.
00:28 The continuity is that, you know, Israel is conducting what it all itself calls the wars
00:35 within wars, which is a series of very targeted strikes in Syria or over Syria against Iranian
00:43 targets or Iranian proxies.
00:46 It has been going on, but the targets are variable in intensity and importance.
00:51 Mainly usually it's the airport or facilities where Iranians are channeling weapons.
00:58 It's rare that they target high-level figures of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards themselves,
01:04 which is the case this morning.
01:05 So this is the new aspect.
01:07 And this aspect, I think, has to do with two things.
01:10 First of all, the new phase, what the Israelis are calling phase three of the war, which
01:15 is lower intensity of battles against Gaza itself, but a higher, let's say, occurrence
01:22 of targeted killings of figures like Hamas leader in Beirut a few weeks ago, like Hezbollah
01:28 leaders in the south, like Hamas leaders in the south of Lebanon this morning, two people,
01:34 I think, and also against very high-level Israeli Iranian operatives in Damascus.
01:41 We had someone killed three weeks ago.
01:43 Today it's another one.
01:45 So this is one aspect.
01:47 It's the targeted killing that is in fact a substitute by Netanyahu for what is increasingly
01:53 perceived as a failing strategy against Gaza itself.
01:57 But then you have another aspect of thing that has to do probably with the strike that
02:03 Iran itself conducted against an alleged Mossad target in Kurdistan three or four days ago,
02:12 where it supposedly hit a nest of Israeli spies also.
02:16 So I think that with this, the scope of the war, which is a low to middle intensity warfare
02:22 between Iran and Israel, mainly about, I mean, through targeted assassination, is widening
02:28 through the region.
02:30 And this is probably something that could become worrying and dangerous with time.
02:34 Yeah, a lot of stuff to address in your response there.
02:38 First of all, I just want to ask you, how do you think Iran will respond?
02:43 Probably Iran doesn't respond directly or quickly.
02:47 It takes time.
02:49 Probably it will hit an Israeli, let's say, intelligence asset.
02:54 I don't know if it's a person or a facility somewhere in the region.
02:58 It could be in Iraq, as you said, in Kurdistan.
03:00 It could be through an American asset also in the Gulf by the Houthis or et cetera.
03:08 Or if Iran considers, but the if is big here, considers that this is trespassing a certain
03:15 threshold, they could maybe launch a series of missiles from Syria inside Israel against
03:21 an intelligence facility like Hezbollah did after the assassination of Saleh al-Aruri
03:27 in Beirut a few weeks ago.
03:29 But to kill a high-level Israeli officer from the intelligence or the armed forces is logistically
03:36 and technically something difficult for Iran, which is in fact probably the core of the
03:42 Israeli move here.
03:44 It's putting Iran in a very difficult situation because it's taking hits that it cannot reply
03:49 to.
03:50 Usually Iran replies strongly to military hits.
03:55 Here it's a hit that is very targeted, very well conducted.
04:00 The target is very well known, and it's really hurting Iran because I think that the number
04:06 of killed this morning was something around 10 people.
04:11 Probably other high-level operatives from Hamas and Hezbollah were present in the room
04:15 and were killed with this Iranian officer.
04:19 And in these cases it's very difficult for Iran and its proxies to retaliate at the same
04:24 level of, I would say, of hurt.
04:28 What about this happening on Syrian soil?
04:30 Is there any chance that the president, Bashar al-Assad, would be willing to have his military
04:37 take action?
04:38 No.
04:39 This, I think, is outside, out of the question.
04:41 Bashar al-Assad has been taking the blows for years now.
04:45 He knows that this is business as usual.
04:48 He will not endanger his own, let's say, military asset if he still has some, because in the
04:54 south of Syria mainly the real operatives that are working there are Iranians or Hezbollah
05:02 people.
05:03 So he doesn't have the leeway to do so, and I don't think he will be interested in doing
05:07 so.
05:08 However, politically, this is cornering him, because it's a way of telling him, we can
05:13 keep on humiliating your regime by targeting the capital, because the strike this morning
05:18 to the difference of others was in the heart of Damascus.
05:22 So it's a way to tell him, either you yourself take in charge the distancing of Israeli operatives
05:29 in the south, or we will keep on humiliating your regime by striking your capital without
05:36 you being able to answer or retaliate, which is a political message that Assad will take.
05:42 But I think that for Assad the number one priority is his political survival.
05:47 So I don't think he will bother too much of being humiliated a little bit more or a little
05:52 bit less here or there.
05:53 And running out of time, so real quickly, do you think if Israel pursues more strikes
05:57 like this, it could be a fork in the road with the U.S. supporting Israel?
06:04 Yeah.
06:05 Now, this is another ballgame.
06:08 You know that there is a strong tension now between the Netanyahu small team and the Biden
06:14 administration.
06:15 This will go on.
06:16 Now, maybe if what we are witnessing means that the intensity of warfare in Gaza is going
06:24 to decrease, probably the American could be satisfied with that.
06:28 They would accept that the targeted killings are a good substitute for that.
06:34 But however, fundamentally, the rift between the Biden administration and Netanyahu is
06:39 growing about other issues that are longer term, that are more political, that has to
06:44 do with the future of the Gaza Strip and the future of the peace process.
06:49 So this is maybe a way to satisfy the Americans for a while.
06:55 But fundamentally, I think the rift between the American and the Israeli administrations
07:00 is going to grow with time, especially now that the Biden administration is entering
07:06 into an electoral phase domestically.
07:08 Joseph, thank you very much.
07:10 Joseph Bout speaking to us from Beirut.
07:12 Thank you.
07:13 - My pleasure, thank you.