Israel Strikes Syria's Military HQ in Damascus

As of Wednesday afternoon, the IDF had undertaken 160 aerial attacks on Syrian regime forces in and around the vicinity of Sweida in southern Syria, where Israel says the regime’s forces are slaughtering Syrian Druze.

In addition, the IDF has attacked, and possibly destroyed, Syria’s Defense Ministry, and also attacked part of the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Dozens or more Syrian regime forces are said to have been killed in IDF attacks.

IDF sources said that the military is ready for a multi-day campaign to convince Syrian regime forces to withdraw from Sweida and leave the Syrian Druze their autonomy.

However, the IDF said that the situation for the Syrian Druze is desperate and that despite aerial attacks, if on Tuesday, the Druze controlled around 70% of Sweida, by Wednesday, regime forces controlled around 70% of the city.

In addition, the IDF said that the regime has around 200 militia men committing atrocities against the Druze in Sweida, while another 1,000 more official Syrian regime army forces have the city surrounded and cut off.

The IDF implied that the Syrian regime may use this model to try to have plausible deniability that it was not directly involved in atrocities, but the military said that intelligence suggests that the mixing of using militias to do the regime’s dirty work appears to have been planned.

At the same time, the IDF did not accuse the Syrian regime of provoking the current crisis.

IDF implies that the Syrian regime may be involved indirectly in the conflict

Rather, it implied that the current crisis had developed organically between Syrian Druze and Syrian Bedouins and that the regime had seized the opportunity of the crisis to try to assert its power and control in this mostly Druze part of southern Syria once and for all.

While the IDF said it will continue to bomb Syrian regime forces to show them the cost of their military actions in Sweida, the military made it clear that it is not sending IDF troops into Sweida to assist.

This could mean that the IDF takes a price from the regime for its current acts in Sweida but fails to prevent it from killing any Druze that it views as a threat, even if it might eventually withdraw its forces once that “mission” is complete.

To deal with the ongoing crisis, including border issues, the IDF is transferring parts of the 35th Brigade from Gaza to the North and may also transfer the 98th Division northward if necessary.

Other reservists could also be called to the North, and there are multiple closed military zones on the Israeli-Syrian border.

Earlier Wednesday, Defense Minister Israel Katz said that Israel would escalate its level of attacks on Syrian regime forces if they do not soon withdraw from Sweida.

Israel had attacked regime forces both on Sunday and on Monday to try to convince them to leave the area, but the regime forces remained.

The picture of exactly what is going on in Sweida is shrouded in a fog of accusations and counter-accusations between clashing Syrian groups.

Israel is saying that it is intervening to protect the Druze, due to decades of supportive relations between Israelis and Druze, including many Druze Israelis serving in the IDF, as well as to keep Syrian regime forces out of a buffer zone which Israel declared in southern Syria in December 2024 after the fall of the Assad regime.