Baladi News - Agencies
The Israeli regional cooperation minister and a non-voting member of its security cabinet, Tzachi Hanegbi, said on Wednesday that the newly supplied S-300 missile system could be defeated by Israel's stealth fighters and possibly destroyed on the ground.
Hanegbi asked during an interview if the Syrian acquisition of the S-300 would clip the Israeli military's wings "Unequivocally, no." adding that "The operational abilities of the air force are such that those (S-300) batteries really do not constrain the air force's abilities to act," he told Israel's Army Radio.
Hanegbi said: "You know that we have stealth fighters, the best planes in the world. These batteries are not even able to detect them."
The S-300 system, and the more advanced S-400, have been deployed in Syria since 2016. So far, the Russian army has used them to protect its aircraft and Russian assets in Syria. But now, Russia’s decision to supply the system means it will be handed over to the Assad regime.
Hanegbi said that Russia had previously stationed its own S-300 in Syria, so the system's capabilities had long been factored into Israeli planning. Syria's military would require "a few months" to get its S-300 operational, he said.
"We have clarified to the Syrians more than once that we will not step back from our commitment to prevent Iran's entrenchment in Syria," Hanegbi said, adding a veiled threat to take action against the S-300 on the ground: "We were already forced, a few months ago, to destroy Syrian missile batteries, and I hope they won't challenge us in the future."
Any such hiatus was a "tactical situation over a week or two" rather than a strategic reassessment by Israel, Hanegbi said.
Asked if Iran and its allies had used the period to step up their activities in Syria, he said he had seen "no basis for that" in Israeli intelligence assessments.
Source: Qasioun Agency