Israel is ready to launch a military operation in Syria against Lebanon’s Hizbullah and its allies should a real threat to Israel arise there, Israeli Ambassador to Russia Gary Koren has said, according to naharnet.com.
“The Iranian regime has always been keen on supporting Syria and Hizbullah and exploiting them as two tools aimed at threatening and deterring Israel,” Koren was quoted as telling a group of Russian reporters.
“Our territory is being subjected to deliberate or non-deliberate shelling with all types of weapons and our army is retaliating and not standing idly by. However, should the situation change and Hizbullah or any other Shiite militia or Iran start to amass a second front at the Golan Heights, we will not tolerate that and we will respond as quickly as possible,” the envoy added.
Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognized by the international community.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict began.
