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n february 10, an unmanned<br />
Iranian reconnaissance aircraft<br />
lifted off from a military base in central<br />
Syria and penetrated Israeli airspace<br />
over the Golan Heights. An Israeli Apache helicopter<br />
tracked the drone, filmed it and blasted it from<br />
the sky with an air-to-air missile. Israeli warplanes<br />
then roared into Syria and bombed the military<br />
base where the drone had been launched, destroying<br />
an Iranian control center. Amid the strike, Syrian<br />
anti-aircraft missiles shot down an Israeli F-16,<br />
the first Israeli fighter downed since 1982.<br />
It was two months before Israel responded, but<br />
on April 9, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu<br />
conferred with President Donald Trump, Israeli<br />
warplanes attacked Iranian forces in Syria head-on.<br />
In addition to destroying additional Iranian drones,<br />
the Israelis wiped out an advanced Iranian air-defense<br />
system that had been shipped from Tehran to<br />
Syria and killed seven members of Iran’s elite Quds<br />
Force, including the commander of the drone unit.<br />
Hard as it is to fathom, these skirmishes between<br />
Israel and Iran represent yet another conflict on the<br />
blood-soaked battleground of Syria.<br />
The country is already host to one war between<br />
government troops and Sunni rebels; another between<br />
a U.S.-trained Arab militia and the Islamic<br />
State militant group (ISIS); and a third pitting invading<br />
Turkish troops against Kurdish fighters. Yet<br />
even after seven years of fighting that have left half<br />
a million dead and uprooted two-thirds of Syria’s<br />
18 million people, the country is bracing itself for a<br />
fourth war, this one between Israel and the Iranian<br />
forces that have established a sizable military presence<br />
in Syria. As both sides trade military blows<br />
there, current and former Israeli officials warn<br />
that a larger battle between the Jewish state and<br />
its archnemesis in Tehran is just a matter of time.<br />
“The confrontation with Iran is unavoidable,” former<br />
Major General Yaakov Amidror recently told<br />
the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot.<br />
Military analysts in Washington agree. “The trend<br />
BATTLE FATIGUE<br />
Clockwise from top<br />
left: Syrians waiting to<br />
flee the ruins of eastern<br />
Aleppo in 2016; Trump<br />
and Netanyahu in Tel Aviv<br />
in 2017; a woman at a<br />
2014 Iranian protest in<br />
Tehran holds the photo<br />
of a child killed in Israeli<br />
attacks in Gaza; the<br />
remains of an Israeli F-15<br />
that crashed in northern<br />
Israel, shot down by Syrian<br />
air defense in February<br />
2018; Al-Qaeda fighters.<br />
CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: IBRAHIM KHADER/PACIFIC PRESS/LIGHTROCKET/GETTY;<br />
JAWAD AL RIFAI/ANADOLU AGENCY/GETTY; KOBI GIDEON/GPO/GETTY; FATEMEH BAHRAMI/ANADOLU<br />
AGENCY/GETTY; JACK GUEZ/AFP/GETTY; PREVIOUS SPREAD: MARINA PASSOS/AFP/GETTY<br />
32 NEWSWEEK.COM MAY 11, 20 18
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