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The U.S. and Israel maintain a closer relationship than previously known when it comes to Israeli attacks on Syria positions, according to a new report.
Washington is informed by Jerusalem prior to these airstrikes and at times coordinates with Israel. Israel claims the main goal of these strikes is to counter Iran’s reach in Syria. The U.S. maintains a troop presence there to help local authorities fight ISIS, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The paper, citing former U.S. officials, said this relationship between Washington and Jerusalem has been going on for years. The paper said the intention of this communication is to prevent interference with the U.S. campaign against ISIS fighters in the country.
The paper said this relationship between the U.S. and Israel has not been previously reported due to the fact that “Washington has sought to support its Israeli ally without being drawn into Israel’s shadow war against Iran.”
The Trends Journal has reported extensively on this shadow war that has escalated in the past few months between Israel and Iran. These strikes include high-profile assassinations. (See “ISRAEL LAUNCHES, KEEPS ATTACKING SYRIA, 3 DEAD,” “ISRAEL KEEPS LAUNCHING MISSILES INTO SYRIA. WILL WAR ESCALATE?” and “U.S. SOLDIERS INJURED AFTER BASE SHELLED IN SYRIA, WHY ARE THESE TROOPS STILL THERE?”)
U.S. troops have been in Syria since 2015 with the mandate to assist local forces in the fight against ISIS. There are about 900 troops still in the country. The U.S. announced last week that it captured a senior ISIS official during an overnight raid in northern Syria.
The BBC, citing a monitoring group, said these U.S. troops were dropped by two helicopters close to the Turkish border in opposition-held Aleppo province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were “seven minutes of armed clashes between the troops and people inside the village before the helicopters flew off.”
The U.S. does not work with Israel to select its target and the overall process is “well-developed” and “deliberate.” The Pentagon did not officially comment on WSJ‘s report but a U.S. defense official told the paper that the mission in Syria is “solely securing the enduring defeat of ISIS, working with our local partners.”
“We won’t discuss the details of these steps we take to reduce the risk to our forces and to the mission,” the official said.
Dennis Ross, a former U.S. Middle East peace envoy, told the paper that there is a “tacit” to American support for the Israelis “acting to blunt the Iranians’ efforts to spread weapons around and build their leverage throughout the region.”
“But there has also been a consistent hesitancy about wanting any fingerprints on this,” he said.
Israel has carried out about 400 airstrikes in Syria and other parts of the Middle East since 2017, the paper reported. The collaboration between the U.S. and Israel is focused on the eastern part of the country, the report said.
The paper said there have been at least two times where the U.S. asked Israel to modify its operations. The first time was during the assassination of ISIS head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019 and another during a fierce fight in the Euphrates River Valley.
The tension between Israel and Iran is reaching new heights, which we pointed out last month in an article titled, “ISRAEL HOLDS MILITARY EXERCISE TO STRIKE IRAN.”
Last month, there was also the assassination of Iranian Col. Sayad Khodai, a member of the elite Quds Force. Iran blamed Israel for the killing. Khodai was shot five times after being approached by two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle.
Jonathan Spyer, the director of the Middle East Center for Reporting and Analysis, wrote in the WSJ that Khodaei’s killing was a turning point in the secret war between the two countries and a “strategy shift” for Israel when it comes to Iran because he had no known connection to the nuclear program.
He wrote that the extension of Israel’s campaign against “Iran’s nonnuclear subversive activities onto Iranian soil is a new development and a significant escalation.”
“Such a change isn’t merely tactical in nature, and a decision to adopt it wouldn’t have been taken without the prime minister’s approval,” he wrote in the Journal. “The growing perception in Israel is that the Iranian nuclear program can’t be seen in isolation from Tehran’s broader strategy for regional domination.”
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: As Gerald Celente has been stating since America’s illegal invasion of Iraq, based on lies that Saddam Hussain had weapons of mass destruction, “Do you think America would invade if Iraq’s major export was broccoli?” The same with Syria and Libya… it’s all about oil and U.S. domination.
The United States has no right to be in Syria, a foreign nation that is no threat and has made no threats to America.
It also should be noted the initial reason given for U.S. military presence in Syria was not fighting ISIS, but rather President Barack Obama, The Noble Peace Prize winner, demanded that its president, Bashar al-Assad, had to go.
Yet, the American media and the public join against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while they champion Washington’s foreign entanglements.
TRENDPOST: It is also worth pointing out that Israel has said that it will not allow Tehran to develop a nuclear weapon. We’ve pointed out that the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation states Israel possesses at minimum some 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads and has produced enough plutonium for 100-200 weapons.
Thus, it is OK for Israel and other nations to have nuclear weapons but not Iran… or, for that matter, North Korea. Only nations sanctified by a higher political order are permitted to have nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction. And, as evidenced with Iraq, whether they possess them or not, the very thought of it is enough to invade and destroy an “enemy” nation.
Naftali Bennett and Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline Islamist, will continue to clash. Raisi has vowed revenge over Khodaei’s killing and Bennett seems intent on continuing Benjamin Netanyahu’s bellicose approach to Iran.
We’ve pointed out that Bennett has recently said Israel will be quick to respond to even small aggressions from Iran, which was the position he took while serving as defense minister in 2020.
Spyer wrote that Bennett once told reporters: “When the octopus tentacles hit you, you must fight back not just against the tentacles, but also make sure to suffocate the head. . . . For years on end, we have fought against the Iranian tentacles in Lebanon, Syria, and the Gaza Strip, but we have not focused enough on weakening Iran itself. Now we are changing the paradigm.”