The Syrian government and its partners have issued a string of contradictory reports regarding yet another reported Israeli strike against Iranian interests in the country. Though the exact details of the event remain unclear, Syria’s dictator Bashar Al Assad and his Russian benefactors seem eager to dismiss the incident, in part or in full, while still declaring some sort of victory in the aftermath a massive U.S.-led missile barrage against various chemical weapons sites in the country. On the night of April 16-17, 2018, Syria’s state media outlet SANA and sources from the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah reported that there had been missile strikes against Shayrat air base near the city of Homs and another military airfield, Al Dumair, outside the capital Damascus. SANA then declared that Syrian air defenders had shot down a number of missiles, before retracting that story and stating that the entire incident had actually been a false alarm. The latest claim is that this was all the result of a combined U.S.-Israeli electronic or cyber warfare attack.

“We don't comment on such reports,” a spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces told various Israeli media outlets. As a general rule, it is Israeli government policy not to acknowledge these operations, at least initially. For its part, the Pentagon said that it was in no way involved in any strikes near Damascus or Homs at that time. That being said, satellite imagery showing Iranian-occupied facilities in Syria subsequently emerged from Israeli media outlets. The message here seemed to be an unambiguous public statement that Israel knows where Iran’s forces in the country are and is more than willing to strike at them if need be.

And though we don’t know whether or not the United States was actually involved, either an Israeli physical or non-kinetic attack would be very plausible. Israel has made it no secret that it sees Iran’s growing influence and physical infrastructure in Syria as an unacceptable threat and has launched a number of strikes against Iranian and Hezbollah-related targets in the country since the civil war began in 2011. This campaign has notably expanded since January 2017 and shows no signs of slowing down. On April 8, 2017, within 24 hours of the now infamous Syrian government chemical weapons attack in Douma, Israeli warplanes fired missiles at Tiyas Air Base near Homs, also known as T4. Iran said that this operation killed seven members of the quasi-military Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force, which is responsible for advising and assisting for military forces and non-state militant groups abroad.

Far News Agency One of the hangars at the T4 air base in Syria after the Israeli strike on April 8, 2018.

"Tel Aviv will be punished for its aggressive action," Bahram Ghassemi, the spokesman for Iran's Foreign Ministry, told reporters on April 16, 2017 in regards to the strike on T4. "The occupying Zionist regime will, sooner or later, receive an appropriate response to its actions." Rather than a response to the Douma attack, that strike appeared to be focused on destroying Iran's unmanned aircraft capabilities within Syria. Among the IRGC's dead was reportedly head of their drone operations in the country. The mission followed directly from an incident in which Iran sent a drone into Israel from Syria in February 2018, which touched off a major series of events, including Syrian air defenders shooting down an Israeli F-16I Sufa multi-role combat aircraft. Earlier in April 2018, Israeli officials announced that the unmanned aircraft was armed and appeared to be on its way to conduct its own strike.

IDF Imagery Israeli officials released of T4 in February 2018, which appears to show an Iranian Shahed 129 drone. The United States shot down two of these over Syria in 2017.

Then, on April 14, 2018, within 24 hours of the American-led missile strikes, Israel reportedly launched another raid into Syria, this time against a Hezbollah garrison near the city of Aleppo. Again, it was not clear if there was any direct connection or coordination between the U.S. military effort and the subsequent Israeli one. “Early this morning, under American leadership, the United States, France and the United Kingdom demonstrated that their commitment is not limited to proclamations of principle,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a written statement after the U.S.-led operation. But he also took the opportunity to tell Assad that “his provision of a forward base for Iran and its proxies endangers Syria.”

AP Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a piece of the Iranian drone that Israeli forces shot down during a press conference in February 2018.

So, in that vein, Israel could have decided to simply launch an attack run to further demonstrate its abilities to penetrate into Syrian airspace and attack targets at will. This would have provided a very visible counterpoint to the February shoot down and in light of dubious Russian-supported claims from Syria’s military about having shot down the majority of the missiles in both Israel’s April 8 strike. “The Syrian response was remarkably ineffective in all domains," U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant General Kenneth McKenzie, Director of the Joint Staff, said during a press conference on April 14, 2018 in regards to the American, British, and French missile strikes.. He declined to say whether or not the United States or its allies actually employed any electronic or cyber warfare capabilities themselves. Russia has since similarly said Syrian forces managed to largely brush aside those missiles with their air defense network. That Syria claimed to have shot down a number of missiles in this latest instance before changing its story to say that there were no incoming threats at all can only cast more doubt on these previous narratives.

Vadim Savitskii / Sputnik via AP Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Major General Igor Konashenkov details outrageous claims about the success Syrian air defense forces had in defeating an American-led missile barrage during a press conference on April 16, 2018.