IDF responds to uninvited Iranian drone, loses F-16 in the process

A confrontation at the weekend in Syria has turned up the heat between arch-foes Israel and Iran, but neither side seems to want a war for now, analysts said.

Israel has always been at odds with Iran and Syria. Israel will be spinning its wheels if it tries to thwart Iran’s plans on its own.

Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime issued a direct threat to Israel on Tuesday, warning the region’s only democracy of “more surprises” should their air force continue to operate over Syrian territory, reports Reuters.

Iran’s seven-year involvement in the Syrian war has increasingly worries Israel, as Iranian military personnel and militias it backs have established themselves close to Israel’s norther border.

In a statement Saturday, Lebanon’s foreign ministry also said it supports Syria’s “legitimate” right to respond to Israel’s “aggressive policy” that it said threatens stability in the region. This would mean putting not only the Syrian conflict in deep freeze but also the Palestinian crisis on the back burner. The Iranians and Syrians fired over two dozen surface-to-air missiles and downed the F-16I.

Iran also used some Lebanese institutions to support its operations in Syria and it used Lebanon to support its Yemeni proxy, the Houthis. “We urge them to do more”. “Israel holds Iran and its Syrian host responsible for today’s aggression. It’s inevitable. Act with haste to uproot them”.

The visit came after the weekend’s incident, in which an Iranian drone was detected over Israeli airspace in the Golan Heights. In fact, the current government in Beirut is understandably seeking to distance itself from regional tensions.

“The al-Watan commentary stressed that Israelis are panicked by the shooting down of the plane”. And of course, he also polished his right-wing bona fides by describing his predecessor Barack Obama as “absolutely awful for Israel” and the Iranian nuclear agreement as “a deal that says let’s ultimately do bad things to Israel'”.

“The Iranian drone entered Israeli airspace early Saturday morning and remained there for a minute and a half before being downed by a combat helicopter”, Breitbart’s Deborah Danan reported.

It may be, however, that Syria’s air defenses are not so decisively destroyed as Israel’s Air Force suggests, and with Russian Federation having supplied the initial air defenses, it’s likely that Russian Federation might come up with yet more air defenses to cover Syrian airspace, and might be warning Israel away from further attacks.

In response, Israel scrambled F-16’s to take out what it called the Iranian “command and control” center that launched the drone at a Syrian air base near Palmyra.

In the medium term, Israel must plan for Iranian and Syrian actions beyond what we have seen thus far, in particular long-range missile strikes. Then Israel began bombing Syria for the 100th or so time.

According to GlobalSecurity.org, the F-16I is a two-seat multi-role fighter custom-designed for the needs of the Israeli Defense Forces. It’s the first time Israel has lost a fighter jet in more than 30 years.

A former chief of Israeli military intelligence put it this way “Israel has the capability to destroy the Russian and Iranian project to save the Assad regime”. Damascus claimed of hitting more than one Israeli aircraft.

Last week, Iran announced that it was producing a drone that carries precision-guided bombs, the Islamic Republic’s military leaders said, according to The Washington Free Beacon. Rubin says Netanyahu is serious. By sucking the country into the conflict, both Syria and Iran will be able to contend that Israel is the main culprit.