IDF announces new attacks on Syrian military capabilities

Since December, the IDF has been less public about any moves on the attack, mostly keeping a quiet defensive watch over the new buffer zone with Syria.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB JANUARY 9, 2025 11:50

Military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian military unearthed by the IDF. January 9, 2025. (photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

The IDF on Thursday made a surprising announcement that it is continuing some attack missions against Syrian military capabilities and not merely holding onto buffer zones, which it seized in early December when the Assad regime suddenly fell.

In early December, the IDF announced it had massively attacked Syria's chemical weapons, air force, long-range missiles, navy, and other dangerous items to avoid them falling into the hands of the incoming Syrian regime led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham's Ahmed al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Muhammad al-Julani.

However, since then, it has been less public about any moves on the attack, mostly keeping a quiet defensive watch over the new buffer zone with Syria.

Over the last month, the UN, the EU, the US, and others have started to open up new ties with Julani to potentially integrate Syria more deeply into the West's sphere of influence than Syria had been under Bashar Assad.

Top UN and some EU officials have pushed hard to remove all sanctions on Syria as soon as possible and to inject foreign investment and support into the country to help build Julani's new government and rescue the country from 14 years of civil war and destruction.

Military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian military unearthed by the IDF. January 9, 2025. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

However, the US this week has walked a middle-of-the-road line, removing some sanctions on Julani and his allies while leaving some decisions about other sanctions to the incoming Trump administration.

Julani and some of his allies had past ties to al-Qaeda, and though they have said they broke ties with the terror group and have moderated over the years, Israel to a large degree, and the US and some of the West to some extent, are suspicious about whether the new regime will move in a more democratic and Western direction or eventually return to its jihadist roots.

It is unclear if the IDF would have taken such additional attack moves and made them public on Thursday if the US had removed all sanctions on Julani and HTS.

More specifically, the IDF said that its Division 474 had carried out additional patrols around the buffer zone area it had taken and found an armored Syrian vehicle loaded with significant weapons.

The weapons included anti-tank missiles, improvised explosives, and other items.

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Confiscating weapons

At the same time, there are no indications from IDF sources that there are wider ambitions to attack Syrian military capabilities on the level that occurred in early December.

Rather, IDF sources indicated to The Jerusalem Post that when IDF forces encounter weapons around their buffer zone areas, a safe move is to confiscate them so they do not fall into the hands of potentially threatening actors in a still chaotic Syria, whether they be the HTS, Hezbollah members, Iranian militias, or Palestinian terror groups.