PGM: Iran’s greatest threat to Israel after nuclear program – opinion

Defense Minister Benny Gantz shocked Israelis last week when he revealed details of a 2018 security incident during which an Iranian drone had crossed into Israeli airspace. The Israelis downed the drone, which originated at the T4 Air Base in Syria. This much was known. But Gantz revealed that the drone was actually intended to deliver explosives to terrorist groups in the West Bank.

The episode was only one among many on the Syrian-Israeli border in recent years. The Israelis have worked overtime to battle Iranian efforts to exploit the fog of war to smuggle a wide variety of advanced weapons to terrorist groups, primarily Hezbollah in Lebanon, but apparently other groups and jurisdictions, too.

In fact, the number of Israeli operations, according to foreign press reports, has increased recently. Not a week goes by without reports of something going “boom” in Syria. It is by now well established that most of those incidents are Israeli strikes targeting Iranian personnel or the transfer of precision-guided munitions, PGMs.

The Israelis call this the “war between wars” campaign. It is a concerted and sustained effort, launched in 2012, to enforce Israel’s red lines in war-torn Syria. Jerusalem has made it clear that it will not allow Iranian personnel or Iran’s terrorist proxies to operate on Syrian soil. This includes Hezbollah, but also a significant number of Shi’ite militias that answer to their paymasters in Tehran.