In today’s news round on Syria, we examine the intricate and escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, marked by Israeli efforts to penetrate the core of Hezbollah’s leadership. In a groundbreaking revelation by *The Financial Times*, Israel’s sophisticated intelligence and precision strikes have brought the group’s top brass, including Hassan Nasrallah, under direct threat. Meanwhile, Israeli bombardments have driven tens of thousands of Lebanese and Syrian refugees across borders, with the UN reporting over 100,000 fleeing into war-torn Syria. These developments, alongside Israeli airstrikes targeting Syrian military leaders like Maher al-Assad, highlight the growing regional instability and the ongoing reshuffling of power dynamics in Syria and Lebanon.
How Israeli spies penetrated Hezbollah
In a shocking report The Financial Times reports that Israel’s relentless efforts to eliminate Hezbollah’s leadership have reached unprecedented levels of sophistication, marked by cutting-edge intelligence gathering and military precision.
In 2006, according to the report, during its war with Hezbollah, Israel attempted to assassinate Hassan Nasrallah three times. In one instance, Nasrallah survived by leaving the location before an airstrike. The other attempts failed due to the strong concrete fortifications of his underground hideout.
However, on a recent Friday, the Israeli military managed to locate Nasrallah in a deep bunker under a residential complex in southern Beirut, dropping up to 80 bombs to ensure his death, according to Israeli media. Despite confidence in Israel’s military and intelligence capabilities, their long struggle against Hezbollah has only recently seen significant shifts.
The key change, as noted by current and former officials, is the depth of intelligence Israel has relied on in recent months. Since the assassination of Fuad Shukr, a close associate of Nasrallah, on July 30, Israel has significantly refocused its intelligence efforts on Hezbollah.
For two decades, Israeli intelligence units collected vast amounts of data to map Hezbollah’s growth, which included examining its political ambitions and connections with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Israeli intelligence now sees Hezbollah as more than just a terrorist group, analyzing its military, political, and social connections in a comprehensive manner.
Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian war starting in 2012 exposed the group to Israeli espionage, making it more vulnerable to infiltrations by Israeli spies. The war in Syria provided a wealth of data, which Israeli intelligence used to gather valuable information about Hezbollah’s operations.
Despite Hezbollah gaining combat experience in Syria, its expanding operations also made it more susceptible to espionage. As Israel’s intelligence and surveillance capabilities improved, they became nearly unbeatable in detecting Hezbollah movements.
Recent operations indicate Israel’s heightened ability to target Hezbollah leadership, culminating in Nasrallah’s recent assassination, a mission that eluded Israeli forces in 2006. However, Hezbollah remains a significant threat, with much of its military capacity still intact.
Israeli bombardment of Lebanon sends 100,000 fleeing to war-torn Syria: UN
At least 100,000 people have crossed from Lebanon into Syria fleeing Israel’s bombardment, the UN refugee agency’s chief said.
“The number of people who have crossed into Syria from Lebanon fleeing Israeli airstrikes – Lebanese and Syrian nationals – has reached 100,000. The outflow continues,” UNHCR’s chief Filippo Grandi said in a post on X on Monday.
The UN agency is operating at four crossing points along with local authorities and the Syrian Red Crescent, Grandi noted.
There are at least 1.5 million Syrian refugees who live in Lebanon, government figures cited by UNHCR show.
Many of them fled the war in Syria that started in 2011 when an initially peaceful antigovernment uprising was met with a brutal crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad.
However, the flow has started to reverse in recent days as the Israeli military has stepped up its operations against Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, pounding Lebanon with air raids that have killed more than 700 in the last week.
The dramatic escalation comes as Israel has shifted its focus from fighting Hamas in Gaza to its northern frontier, where it has traded nearly daily crossfire with Hezbollah since the start of the war in Gaza in October.
Israel’s stated aim in its offensive in Lebanon is to allow the return of tens of thousands of Israeli civilians to their homes in the north of Israel.
However, its operations against Hezbollah, including the detonation of electronic communications devices that killed 39 and injured thousands, and its subsequent killing of Nasrallah, appear to have raised confidence that it could destroy its longstanding enemy in Lebanon.
The bombardment has seen the stream of people escaping into Syria grow rapidly. On Friday it was reported that 30,000 had crossed the border.
Israeli airstrike on Syria targets villa used by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher: report
The Israeli military carried out an airstrike near the Syrian capital Sunday night, with reports saying a villa belonging to President Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher was the target, according to the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper.
A military source told the paper that a drone targeted Maher al-Assad’s home with three missiles in the Yafour area, west of Damascus, along the highway leading to the Lebanese capital Beirut.
Sounds of explosions were heard across the Damascus countryside, the source said, but there are no confirmed reports about casualties or the fate of Maher, who heads Syria’s powerful 4th Division.
There have been frequent rumours about Maher Al-Assad’s death throughout the Syrian war, including reports that he lost a limb in a 2012 bombing of a Syrian regime intelligence meeting.
Commanders from Lebanon’s Hezbollah as well as the Iranian Revolutionary Guards frequented the villa, the SOHR said.
The observatory said warnings had reached Maher that any weapons being transferred from the Fourth Division’s stockpile to Hezbollah in Lebanon would be targeted by Israel.
The SOHR’s sources denied that Maher was injured in the strike, saying he was not in the building at the time of the strike.
Monitor Says Israeli Raid In Syria Wounds Pro-Iran Fighters
AFP reported that seven pro-Iran fighters were wounded early Monday in an Israeli strike near a Syrian border crossing with Lebanon, where Israel is bombing Hezbollah targets.
“Israeli warplanes after midnight carried out a new air strike, targeting a building in the vicinity of the Jdeidet Yabus border crossing with Lebanon,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It said seven pro-Iran fighters, two of them Syrians, were wounded, without specifying the nationality of the others.
The crossing, known as Masnaa on the Lebanese side and located on the Beirut-Damascus road, has been inundated with Syrians and Lebanese fleeing Israeli strikes in Lebanon since September 23.
The Observatory said hours earlier an “Israeli drone shot highly explosive missiles at a villa” belonging to a Syrian army division led by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher in Yaafur near the Lebanese border.
Syria’s official news agency SANA, citing a military source, said an Israeli air strike on Friday killed five Syrian soldiers near the border.
The United Nations’ refugee head said on Monday that some 100,000 people have fled to Syria from Lebanon due to Israeli air strikes, a figure that has doubled in two days.
Hezbollah commanders flee to Syria, Iran to send thousands to Lebanese border
As the world speculates about Iran’s “next move” in the wake of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s assassination, concerns grow over potential retaliation. Meanwhile, reports from the U.S. indicate preparations for a possible attack from Iranian territory, Israeli Ynetnews.com reported.
However, according to a report by Bloomberg, Iran is likely seeking to avoid a regional war. Current and former officials in the U.S. and several Middle Eastern countries suggest Nasrallah’s assassination is unlikely to trigger such a conflict.
Instead, Iran is expected to focus on rebuilding Hezbollah and keeping its proxies across the region active for as long as possible.
Bloomberg highlights the severe blow Hezbollah, and by extension, Iran, suffered with the assassination of Nasrallah and Hezbollah’s top leadership. They also note a cautious statement issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who declared that the region’s future will be shaped by the “forces of resistance,” but stopped short of issuing a direct threat against Israel.
A source familiar with the operations of Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria said Hezbollah’s allies in these countries are now expected to play a central role in smuggling resources to the Lebanese terror group.
The same source added that Iran will now also try to move thousands of fighters to the border areas of Lebanon and Syria and, according to him, thousands of fighters have already moved from Iraq to Syria in recent months – a move that probably indicates that Iran is preparing to strengthen its forces in the region, apparently for the purposes of “deterrence.”
Bloomberg also reports that since Hezbollah began assisting the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war in 2012, the Shiite terrorist organization has built bases and a “sophisticated” network of tunnels in various areas of Syria close to the border with Lebanon. A source familiar the details noted that many Hezbollah field commanders recently fled Lebanon to Syria along with their families.
Meanwhile, a drone exploded on Monday at a horse farm in Merom Golan, meters from kids, injuring horses on Golan Heights.
No sirens were activated anywhere nearby, to warn of the attack. There were no injuries reported but a fire broke out and was handled by the local emergency response team. Two horses were injured by shrapnel.
Some Syrians mourn others celebrates Hezbollah leader killed in Israeli strike
Flags flew at half-mast in Damascus on Sunday and residents said they were still shocked after the killing of Hezbollah’s chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose fighters helped Syria’s army reclaim large parts of the country during its brutal civil war.
Syria announced three days of national mourning, with President Bashar al-Assad saying on Sunday that Nasrallah would “remain in the memory of Syrians”.
In Damascus, residents expressed disbelief over Israel’s killing of Nasrallah.
“He can’t die. He always dreamed of martyrdom, and while this is fitting, it’s still so hard to accept,” Marwa Barkouka told Reuters. “He remains alive, not just as a martyr but because he lives inside us. We grew up with him here.”
Syria’s conflict erupted in 2011 with protests against Assad. Nasrallah in 2012 called for reform in the country, but by the next year said that Hezbollah would fight alongside Assad to prevent Syria falling to Sunni jihadi radicals, the United States and Israel.
Many credit Hezbollah’s intervention for key victories, first along Syria’s border with Lebanon and later on in other cities.
“For us, this man was like an entire nation. We had dignity, and now it’s gone,” said Ibrahim Al-Ahmad, another resident of Damascus.
Videos circulating on social media show jubilant crowds from the Idlib region of northwestern Syria, JPost.com reported. Upon hearing of Nasrallah’s death, celebrants in the videos pour into the streets, holding Syrian flags and handing out candies.
“The people of Idlib are celebrating Nasrallah’s death after all the evil things he did against them,” Mofida Akir, an activist in the Syrian revolution, told The Media Line. “I personally cried a lot out of joy because a tyrant was killed, and this means that others may follow, like Assad. I rejoiced for every mother and wife whose son or husband was killed by him and his militia, or those who generally experienced displacement and violence.”
“We would have been even more joyful if he had been killed by the hands of Syrians as vengeance for our blood,” Akir continued. “We are just grateful that he doesn’t pose a threat anymore to our country.”
