By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent
JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS (Worthy News) – Israel has warned that it will destroy Syrian President Bashar Assad’s “regime” if Syria gets involved in the Gaza war, diplomats said Monday.
“The Israelis clearly warned Assad that if Syria was used against them, they would destroy his regime,” a Western diplomatic official told media on condition of anonymity.
Recent months saw several strikes on Iranian targets in Syria, widely blamed on Israel.
The attacks culminated in an April 1 Israeli airstrike that leveled a building next to Tehran’s consulate in Damascus and killed seven commanders in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, two of them generals.
Iran responded by firing a barrage of hundreds of missiles and drones in response around midnight on April 13, backed by several groups in the region.
Israel’s leadership said, “Iran supports terror groups” such as Hamas, which on October 7 killed about 1,200 people and kidnapped hundreds more in Israel.
Israel has vowed to “eradicate Hamas,” which controls Gaza.
RUSSIAN ROLE
Despite Arab anger over Israel’s attacks, Syria’s main ally, Russia, maintains diplomatic ties with Israel and reportedly also pushed for stability in Syria’s south, which borders the Golan Heights.
Syria appears to have heeded Russia and the United Arab Emirates to remain out of the Israel war in Gaza against Hamas. Its border with the Golan Heights remains relatively calm despite a handful of strikes launched by Iran-backed Hezbollah-allied groups.
Syria also does not want to become part of a regional conflict as it returned to the Arab fold, seeking better ties with wealthy Gulf states, say observers familiar with the situation. Assad hopes Arab nations can help fund Syria’s post-war reconstruction — although Western sanctions will likely deter investment, according to sources familiar with the case.
In 2018, the United Arab Emirates re-established ties with Syria, and it has been leading the charge to reintegrate Damascus into the 22-member-strong Arab League.
Syria has had a problematic relationship with Hamas, whose October 7 onslaught on southern Israel triggered the war, but Hamas and Assad reconciled in 2022.
The reconciliation came a decade after Hamas, long allied with Damascus, broke ties over its suppression of mainly Sunni Muslim protests that triggered Syria’s civil war.
The Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza claimed Monday that the Israeli military operations launched in October killed 34,488 Palestinians while 77,643 were injured.
The war reportedly displaced most of the 2.3 million population in Gaza. Ongoing clashes laid much of the enclave to waste, with Hamas hiding in tunnels and elsewhere between civilian sites such as hospitals, schools, and churches.
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
A Christian widow in Pakistan’s Punjab province is devastated after her married daughter went missing, while elsewhere in the region, a mother of four and a mother of six have also disappeared following alleged abductions by Muslim men, Worthy News learned Saturday.
South Korea, long seen as the democratic opposite of its authoritarian-ruled northern neighbor, faces growing scrutiny for what critics call a widening crackdown on Christian leaders and churches.
Hungary’s prime minister told U.S. President Donald J. Trump on Friday that it would take a miracle for Ukraine to win the war against Russia. Viktor Orbán made the remarks at the White House, where Trump asked him during a joint news conference about the prospects for Kyiv’s victory.
Hungarian prosecutors have requested a two-year suspended prison sentence for Gábor Iványi, a 76-year-old Methodist pastor, once a close confidant of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, and several opposition politicians, in a case widely viewed as politically charged.
In a decision that could reshape federal identification standards, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Trump administration to enforce its policy requiring Americans to list their biological sex–male or female–on passports, rather than self-identified gender.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R–S.D.) told Republican senators Thursday to prepare for a critical Friday vote aimed at ending the nation’s longest-ever government shutdown — now in its sixth week — as lawmakers scramble to reach a deal amid growing economic strain and partisan stalemate.
The Senate on Thursday narrowly rejected a Democratic resolution that would have required President Donald Trump to seek congressional approval before taking military action against Venezuela, marking the second failed attempt in as many months to rein in the administration’s campaign targeting Venezuelan drug-trafficking vessels.