Alleged Israeli airstrike targets Latakia port in Syria - report
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.
Photos reportedly from the scene showed what appeared to be a fire that had broken out at the port due to the alleged airstrikes.
Syrian air defenses responded to an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting the Latakia port in northwestern Syria on Monday night, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.
Photos reportedly from the scene showed what appeared to be a fire that had broken out at the port amid shipping containers due to the alleged airstrikes.
A military source told SANA that Israeli aircraft fired several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean towards the container yard at the commercial port in Latakia. A number of shipping containers caught on fire due to the airstrike and no casualties were caused, according to SANA.
The Latakia area is a stronghold for Russian forces in Syria, with the Russian Khmeimim Air Base located near Latakia.
In 2018, 14 Russian soldiers were killed when a Russian military aircraft was downed by a Syrian air defense missile during alleged Israeli airstrikes near Latakia. Russia expressed outrage at Israel at the time, largely blaming it for the incident.
Earlier this week, Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad warned that Israel would respond to Israeli airstrikes against Syria, saying that such attacks "could not go unanswered."
The last alleged Israeli airstrike which targeted sites in Syria was reported about two weeks ago, when at least four people were killed in strikes targeting sites belonging to Hezbollah in the Homs Governorate in western Syria.
A number of additional airstrikes blamed on Israel targeted Syria throughout November.
Over the past year, while Israeli strikes have intensified in Syria, the response time by Syrian air defense batteries has become quicker, leading the Israel Air Force to change how it acts during such operations – including by having larger formations so that more targets can be struck at once during an operation instead of having jets return to the same target.
Iran has begun deploying advanced anti-aircraft missile batteries to the region in an attempt to challenge Israeli jets.
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Why an airstrike on Syria's Latakia Port matters – analysis
Reports of an airstrike in Syria’s Latakia could be a major shift and gamechanger as the port is a sensitive area and key to the Syrian regime as well as its backers in Moscow.
First of all the reports of an airstrike and the fact that Syrian air defenses were activated in the area are rare events. Syrian regime media SANA reported on the strikes and claimed shipping containers were targeted. Based on foreign accounts the importance of this incident can be examined and contextualized.
Tony Badran, an expert on the region and a Research Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, tweeted “if confirmed that this was an Israeli strike on Latakia port, it would be somewhat significant news. In July 2013, the Israelis reportedly struck a shipment of Yakhont missiles there, and again in October they struck other missiles meant for Hezbollah.”
Video from the area appeared to show a fire caused by the incident. An account online by Yoruk Isik, who is known as an expert and observer of maritime issues in Turkey, wrote that a ship of interest “sanctioned by the US Treasury for providing logistical services to Iran Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces, Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines’ Iran flag container ship Artabaz transited Bosphorus towards BlackSea en route from Bandar Abbas and Latakia to Constanta.”
He writes that the strike area matches an area where this ship unloaded containers in late November. It was not possible to confirm this but is part of the wider speculation about what happened at Latakia port.
The airstrike comes as Syria’s foreign minister was concluding a visit to Iran and the UAE’s National Security Advisor had just been in Iran. Press reports in the region had scant details.
No Iranian media covered the attack in the morning, hours after it happened. Russia’s TASS state media did not have a report. Al-Ain media in the Gulf reported only that Syria had claimed it repelled “an Israeli attack.”
Al-Mayadeen media, which is generally sympathetic to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, had a more extensive report. It said sounds of explosions could be heard across the city. “Violent” explosions were heard around 1:32 am.
“A military source said in a statement to SANA that at around 1.32 a.m. today, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean, southwest of Latakia, targeting the container yard in the commercial port of Latakia.”
The source said commercial containers were harmed. Latakia Governor Amer Ismail Hilal told SANA that "the firefighting teams were able to put out the fires that broke out in the port's container yard as a result of the Israeli aggression and are currently working to cool the site."
Al-Mayadeen said that “Preliminary information about the Israeli attack indicates that the aggression was carried out through Israeli missiles launched from off the Syrian coast, within the territorial waters, targeting a dock containing a number of containers inside the port of Latakia city.”
Acording to this report, the Russians at Khmeimim airbase nearby had “announced that [they] had monitored ten bombing attacks by Jabhat al-Nusra elements in the Idlib region of the de-escalation zones in the northwest of the country.”
It wasn’t clear why this report was. intermingled with the report about Latakia, except to paint a picture of alleged coordination and connection between the two.
The report also claimed that the last airstrike was on November 24th when several soldiers were killed in Syria. “A few days earlier, the Syrian air defenses responded to missile aggression launched by Israeli planes from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting an empty building south of Damascus. One of the hostile missiles was shot down.”
The airstrike reports come amid other tensions in the region. Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen targeted Saudi Arabia’s capital on December 6 and Saudi air defenses were actively repelling the attack.
Russia monitors closely what happens in Latakia. In October Russia said that “militants from Syria’s Idlib de-escalation zone have opened fire several times on populated localities in Latakia and Aleppo over the past 24 hours,” Lieutenant General Vladimir Savchenko, the chief of the Russian center for reconciliation of conflicting sides in Syria, told reporters.
In February 2020 TASS media in Russia said that “Syria’s missile defense forces are intercepting aerial targets near Jebla, a town close to the seaport of Latakia, the country’s state-run Suraya TV reported on Wednesday. Russia’s Hmeymim airbase is located not far from Jebla.”
This is important because it notes the proximity and importance the area has to Russia. Russia has accused extremist groups in Idlib of using drones to target the Russian base. “On February 1, 2020 airspace control equipment of the Russian base detected a cluster air target of UAVs, launched from the militants-controlled territory of the Idlib de-escalation zone.
The Russian reconciliation center later reported that ‘the base’s electronic warfare systems took over control of the UAVs and knocked them down by jamming their command-and-control systems.’”
This shows that Russia has sophisticated air defenses in this area. Syria also has air defenses. In September 2018 a Russian Il-20 plane "disappeared during an attack by four Israeli F-16 jets on Syrian facilities in Latakia province,” TASS reported at the time.
Syrian air defense shot down the plane, claiming to be responding to an Israeli attack, but Russia pointed fingers at Israel for causing the dangerous situation.
Israel expressed sorrow at the time for the incident. An ammunition warehouse was allegedly struck, according to an ImageSat International analysis published in 2018. Later Russia said it would improve Syria’s air defenses. In 2018 CNN reported this as a potential “blow to Israel.”
However not much appeared to happen and Syrian air defense continued to fire wildly, sending an S-200 toward Cyprus and also toward southern Israel over the last two years. In July 2021 Russian Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit claimed Israeli F-16s struck an area in Homs province, and he made more claims in October.
According to Paul Iddon at Forbes, these reports raised eyebrows because they appeared to highlight new capabilities of Syrian air defenses.
It’s important to understand the layout of this area. Russia’s Khmeimim airbase, a center of operations for Russia, is only 25km from Latakia port. It is also around 50km from the Tartus naval facility that Russia maintains on the coast. From Tartus to Latakia port is around 85km or an hour drive.
What that means is that this is a small area. Air defenses in this area may range from some 250km with the S-300 to 150km for the S-200 or shorter ranges with the BUK out to some 20km and the Pantsir, which has a range of 12km. According to reports Russia’s S-300 was deployed to Tartus years ago and the S-400 to Syria in 2015. These are sophisticated systems with long-range radar.
Previous reports indicated that Iran has sought to move advanced air defenses to Syria as well. In April 2018 Iran sought to move its 3rd Khordad system to T-4 airbase near Palmyra. The system was reportedly destroyed in an airstrike that month.
A report at Alma Research and Education Center by Yaakov Lappin noted on November 16 “Iran is attempting to smuggle its surface-to-air missile (SAM) system into Syria, as part of its ongoing efforts to entrench itself militarily in the country and turn it into a war front against Israel.”
Overall the context is then clear. A very rare incident occurred in Latakia. This is a very sensitive area near Russian forces in Khemeimim and Tartus. So far there has been no major media response in Iran or Russia, the two backers of the Syrian regime.
In the past, there has been controversy over airstrikes and incidents in this region. The explosions heard in the area can be attributed to air defense interceptions, secondary explosions of munitions in containers, or the airstrikes themselves.
Time will tell if satellite photos and open source information gatherers provide more clues as to what happened, or if regional media provide more reports.
The Syrian regime may appear to be humiliated after its foreign minister told Iranian counterparts on Monday it would respond to this kind of aggression. This may also ruffle feathers from Moscow to other states in the region that want the Syrian regime to be more stable and able to control its airspace.
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This seems to be the period of blame shift by Biden. First he attacked the press for being tougher on him than Trump and now he blames the oil industry for his ill-conceived ideas:
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The luxury of having no rival in the world induced the United States into the first bout of self-hate in its history. We are now faced with navigating reality under such conditions.
A vacuum was created 30 years ago by the peaceful collapse of both the Imperial Russian state constructed over centuries from Peter the Great to Stalin, and the Bolshevik dictatorship of the Soviet Union that was purporting to perfect Marxism and spread it to a yearning and grateful world. That vacuum has been filled by China, assisted at least tentatively by selected opportunistic allies. So thorough, sudden, and bloodless was the American-led triumph over the Soviet Union, that it has required 30 years for a serious replacement challenge to the West to emerge.
At the end of World War I, when Germany effectively surrendered but was not occupied, the supreme Allied commander, France’s Marshal Foch, correctly described the 1919 Treaty of Versailles as “a 20-year armistice.”
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Is Israel-Iran War Inevitable
By Mordechai Ben-Menachem 7 December 2021
The Biden Mal-Administration is occupied to foment war in the Horn of Africa. They also press to foment war between Morocco and Algeria. And most important to them, the Maladroit team has been assiduously working to cause war between Israel and Iran.
What is going on, really?
The Biden Team is as inefficient at fomenting conflict as they have been in managing the economy and Covid-19.
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| A Large Number Of Small Things: A Porcupine Strategy For Taiwan | ||||
| by James Timbie, Admiral James O. Ellis Jr. via Texas National Security Review As China’s rhetoric about “reunification” with Taiwan and the military’s gray-zone activities intensify, Taiwan should adopt a strategy that includes a large number of small things in order to leverage Taiwan’s geographic and technological advantages, exploit the People’s Liberation Army’s vulnerabilities, and help to deter an attempt to take the island by force +++
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