Damascus – A CBS News team drove through a Syrian military air base on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on Monday, and the devastation from Israeli airstrikes was clearly visible. Israel has said it is determined to destroy weapons and other military equipment deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad and his father spent half a century accumulating money before it could fall into the hands of extremists.
Since Assad fled to Russia earlier this month, the Israeli military has relentlessly attacked Syria’s military infrastructure – forced to retreat by a shock rebel offensive after a decade of civil war that largely ended in an apparent stalemate until about two weeks ago.
The damage done to Assad’s old war machine is staggering. For example, an overnight impact in the coastal city of Tartus was so massive that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group quoted a scientist in Turkey as saying it registered the equivalent of a Category 3 earthquake on the Richter scale.
Until Moscow’s ally Assad fled Syria, Russia maintained its only major naval base outside Russian territory in Tartus. Satellite images (below) showed that most Russian ships disappeared from the port of Tartus shortly after Assad’s fall, but the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday that it was still in discussions about what to do with its military equipment and personnel in the country should deal with the country’s new de facto rebel rulers.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, claims it has destroyed most of Assad’s heavy weapons and air defense facilities. In a statement on Monday, the Israel Defense Forces said its warplanes had in recent days “caused heavy damage to Syria’s most strategic weapons: fighter jets and helicopters, Scud missiles, UAVs, cruise missiles and precision-guided surface-to-sea missiles.” Missiles, surface-to-air missiles, surface-to-surface missiles, radars, missiles and more.”
The IDF said its strikes destroyed “over 90% of the ousted regime’s identified strategic surface-to-air missiles.”
In the lightning-quick takeover of Syria by the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) a week ago, Israeli forces also carried out a land incursion that extended beyond the occupied Golan Heights region into a previously demilitarized buffer zone within Syria.
Ahmed al-Sharaa, the head of HTS and Syria’s new de facto leader, criticized what he called Israel’s “uncalculated military adventures,” saying he and his group – before publicly distancing themselves from extremist ideology , an al-Qaeda affiliate — was more interested in state-building than in starting another conflict with Israel.
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The attacks on Syrian military sites have also revealed Assad’s deep neglect. Years of corruption and a decade of civil war had hollowed out the country’s armed forces and contributed to the collapse of its regime. Much of the hardware his forces left behind when they surrendered to the rebels or simply shed their uniforms and fled is old and clearly no longer maintained.
Assad’s office issued the first statement attributed to the deposed leader since he was forced to flee his country. In it, he claims he never considered resigning or fleeing, but instead sought refuge at the Russian-controlled air base in Hmeimim as the rebels closed in, and when that facility came under sustained drone attack, an evacuation was ordered, he says he December 8th, one day after the HTS rebels captured the capital Damascus.
He said he ultimately went to Russia because he could do nothing else in Syria and lamented the country’s fall “into the hands of terrorism.”
The statement was published on the official channel of the Syrian presidency on the messaging app Telegram, noting that it was published after several unsuccessful attempts to publish it through Arab and international media. However, the statement was deleted relatively quickly from the Telegram channel without explanation before it reappeared there and on the president’s Facebook page.
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While the broader international community is still considering how to deal with the HTS, it has said it will respect Syrians of all religions and appears committed to being seen as a secular transitional government – although it has not said what next After a three-month transition period, Israel and the United States have remained largely focused on securing Assad’s stockpiled weapons.
For Israel, it marked the most intense airstrikes in Syria in years, and they continued on Monday, just over a week after Assad’s sudden withdrawal.
Whoever gains control of Syria will inherit a largely destroyed military infrastructure. Judging by the IDF’s statement on Monday that its attacks represented “a significant success for Israeli air force superiority in the region,” that may be exactly what was intended.
