Outgoing IDF chief: Israel has struck 'thousands' of Iranian targets in Syria
The outgoing IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot on Friday said that Israel has carried out “thousands” of airstrikes against Iranian military targets in Syria in recent years.
In an interview to the New York Times ahead of his retirement next week, Eisenkot for the first time confirmed the scale of Israel’s ongoing military campaign to thwart Iranian entrenchment in Syria.
"We struck thousands of targets without claiming responsibility or asking for credit,” he said.
Eisenkot said Israel in the last two years shifted its focus to Iran, its primary enemy, to prevent the IDF from getting bogged down in fighting secondary enemies like Hamas in Gaza.
“When you fight for many years against a weak enemy,” he said, “it also weakens you.”
At first, Eisenkot said Israeli operations in Syria operated under a “certain threshold,” referring to the IDF restricting strikes to weapons shipments bound for Iran’s Lebanon-based proxy group Hezbollah during the first few years of the civil war that broke out in 2011.
But in the years that followed, Eisenkot said Iran made a “significant change” in its Syria strategy, and began importing manpower from around the Muslim world in a bid to solidify its hold in the country.
“Their vision was to have significant influence in Syria by building a force of up to 100,000 Shiite fighters from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said. “They built intelligence bases and an air force base within each Syrian air base. And they brought civilians in order to indoctrinate them.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/outgoing-idf-chief-israel-struck-thousands-of-iranian-targets-in-syria/
Basically Israel prevented an Iranian takeover of Syria.