TEHRAN – Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a condemnation Tuesday of the Israeli regime’s intensified military assaults across southern Syria, denouncing the latest airstrikes near Damascus and Sweida as “continuous violations of international law” designed to fracture Syrian sovereignty and empower sectarian militias.

Ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei warned that the Security Council’s inaction has emboldened Israel’s “barbaric murderers,” citing the regime’s attacks on civilian infrastructure and massacres in Gaza as parallel crimes demanding global intervention.

Baqaei underscored that such atrocities occur amid Israel’s ongoing occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights, illegally annexed in 1981 in defiance of UN resolutions.

The Israeli regime has intensified its attacks on Syria this week, targeting the entrances of the Presidential Palace and the General Staff Command building of the Armed Forces in Umayyad Square, Damascus, along with coordinated assaults near Sweida—a strategic southern province inhabited by Syria’s Druze minority.

These operations, framed by Israeli War Minister Israel Katz as “pre-emptive security measures,” have displaced thousands and reportedly resulted in over a hundred casualties, including civilians executed in field operations by Israeli-backed factions.

Normalization shadows and Druze as pawns

Critically, Tehran’s rebuke exposes the hypocrisy of Syria’s interim government, led by Abu Mohammad al-Jolani (Ahmed al-Sharaa)—a former U.S.-designated terrorist whose Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) faction now spearheads Damascus’s covert normalization talks with Tel Aviv.

Despite “condemning” recent Israeli strikes and directing his violent henchmen to fight the Druze, al-Jolani’s regime has engaged in backchannel diplomacy, including reported meetings with Tel Aviv’s so-called National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi in the UAE and Azerbaijan.

These negotiations, occurring after U.S. President Donald Trump’s meeting with al-Jolani and the lifting of sanctions on Syria, allegedly aim to consolidate Israel’s dominance in the country and absorb Syria into the Abraham Accords—a move seen by many as eroding Syrian sovereignty, even as the regime has been killing many Syrians.

“The terror regime in Syria must be fought,” declared Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, demanding al-Jolani’s assassination even as HTS has been engaged in covert diplomatic talks with Tel Aviv.

Chikli’s rhetoric ironically underscores the moral bankruptcy of al-Jolani’s collaboration with Israel, which seeks to fragment Syria via proxy militias.

Central to Israeli strategy, analysts note, is the instrumentalization of Syria’s Druze minority. The regime has deployed troops deeper into Syrian territory under the pretext of “protecting” Druze communities near Sweida—a move that can be regarded as a thinly veiled occupation campaign. 

This tactic mirrors Israel’s historical use of sectarian proxies to weaken the territorial integrity of West Asian countries and even balkanize them, with Druze leader Muwaffaq Tarif’s plea for Israeli intervention exposing the community’s tragic manipulation.