Russia Tells Iranians to Evacuate Syrian Posts After Strikes Attributed to Israel, Report Says
London-based Asharq Al-Awsat reports Russian officers told their Iranian counterparts that they needed to clear their forces out of a major military site in Hama that houses long-range missiles
Following air raids attributed to Israel in central and western Syria, Russia has demanded that Iranian militias withdraw from their posts in those areas, a report said on Friday, quoting a Syrian regime official.
Asharq Al-Awsat, a London-based newspaper with ties to the Saudi royal family, reported that Russia made the demand in a meeting at Hama Military Airport on Wednesday between several Russian officers and their Iranian counterparts, in light of increased attacks on Iranian targets in Syria.
Asharq Al-Awsat quotes the regime source as saying that Russian officers told their Iranian counterparts that they needed to clear their forces out of a major military site in Hama for the Syrian regime, which houses long-range missiles and other Russian-made weapons.
The report said that Russian officers claimed another Iranian military site, further west, in the Hamidiya area, must be evacuated in order to evade Israeli strikes.
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Syrians loyal to the regime of Bashar Assad have been disappointed in Russia, the report added, for its inability to speak out over the alleged Israeli strikes in Syria.
On Wednesday night, Israeli allegedly struck two airports, one in Damascus and one in Aleppo, as an Iranian plane that had been sanctioned by the United States over Revolutionary Guard Corps links had been preparing to land. On Thursday, Syria’s foreign minister addressed the strikes, saying that Israel was “playing with fire.”
Last week, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights attributed to Israel a strike on a weapons storage facility containing hundreds of Iranian-made ground-to-ground missiles. According to Syrian reports, 14 civilians were injured in the attack. The missiles were under manufacture for more than a year, and over the past few months they were transported to a storage facility in Masyaf.
Earlier in August, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported that three Syrian soldiers had been killed and three others injured in an Israeli assault in the area of the port city of Tartus in western Syria. A Syrian military source told SANA that Israel also attacked a suburb of Damascus at the same time as the assault.
On Tuesday, an Israeli satellite imaging company reported that Russia has shipped a battery of S-300 anti-aircraft missiles from Syria to a Russian port near Crimea, in an apparent attempt to bolster its air defenses in the war with Ukraine. The company captured images of the battery in Masyaf, Syria in April, and the empty site left behind on August 25 after the hardware was shipped to the port of Tartus.
