Following these reports, Benjamin Netanyahu stated "it’s simply incorrect to say the Russians are changing their policy toward us," although what exactly is going on behind closed doors remains a mystery. Over the last week, Israel has only ramped up its strikes in Syria, with multiple missions being carried out including the assassination of a militant leader with close ties to the Assad regime. Since the Syrian civil war began six years ago, Israeli air strikes in Syrian territory were far less frequent, and the Israeli government did not officially even admit that they had been occurring until Syria fired on the IAF's jets nearly two weeks ago.

As far as Syria's ability to carry out such a counterstrike against Israeli targets—there is no doubt that the Assad regime still retains hundreds of Scud derivatives of various origins. These include copies from North Korea and from Iran. Since the conflict in Syria began, Assad's forces have used Scuds against their own people on numerous occasions.

Israel has an extremely capable anti-ballistic missile defense system that has a multitude of layers aimed at countering everything from small improvised artillery rockets to medium-range ballistic missiles. Still, a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles from Syria, even if they are all intercepted or fail to hit their targets, would result in a major IAF operation to route Assad's ballistic missile capabilities, and could even include the targeting of Syrian command and control or regime targets as well.