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Iran's allies, including Hezbollah, have been bolstering their presence near the occupied Golan Heights in southern Syria and are taking measures against potentially intense Israeli strikes, sources in the Syrian opposition said.
Syrian and Iraqi paramilitary forces have also taken up positions in the area since Israel killed two major figures in Tehran’s regional militia alliance last week, the Amman-based sources said.
The assassinations of senior Hezbollah commander Fouad Shukr in Beirut and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran drew threats of direct retaliation from Iran and its non-state allies.
Hezbollah personnel along the Golan Heights – a strategic plateau between Syria, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon – “are moving in tighter, lighter formations and using more motorcycles”, one opposition military figure said.
Southern Syria has become a second front for Hezbollah, after south Lebanon, in an Iran-led drive to harass Israel since the Gaza war broke out in October.
Before the Gaza war, analysts sometimes called it an attempted “third missile front” for Iran's allies, after Gaza itself and southern Lebanon, which had tens of thousands of rockets and missiles aimed at Israel.
In April, the proxy warfare briefly turned direct, with Tehran striking Israel with drones and missiles in retaliation after the elimination of top Iranian commanders in Damascus.
Many expected the scenario to be repeated after the recent assassinations, although it has yet to.
However, Hezbollah's operations in the Golan Heights have consisted mainly of light rocket attacks on Israeli targets and the monitoring of the Israeli formations across a 1974 armistice line.
Its military strength on the Syrian side of the annexed territory is estimated to be in the hundreds, as opposed to the thousands of Hezbollah fighters in South Lebanon, Arab security officials said.
Its presence on the Golan front is supported by allied militia, comprising local forces and militia from Iraq, as well as members of Iran's elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Another Syrian opposition figure said Hezbollah troop rotations had stopped and that new fighters had been sent from Lebanon and from other parts of Syria to “augment the existing forces, not to replace them”.
The support includes the stationing of Syria's Quds Brigade in countryside areas bordering Qunaitra, as well as IRGC and Iran-allied Iraqi auxiliaries near the Khalkhala and Thala military airports north and west of Suweida, the capital of Suweida province, the opposition military figure said.
The Quds Brigade is drawn mainly from Palestinian recruits at a refugee camp near Aleppo, in northern Syria. The group is different from the Quds Force, a key IRGC unit.
Hezbollah personnel mainly operate in an area parallel to the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
These areas stretch from the outskirts of Qunaitra to the Yarmouk River basin, passing through the western parts of Deraa province.
Hezbollah also supervises local militias it formed over the last decade, particularly in an area that borders Jordan and Israel along the Yarmouk, where the Lebanese militant group's direct presence is small, the source said.
“Iran’s grip over south Syria is being furthered for the long-term. At one point the Iran-Israel escalation will end but the new militias will not withdraw,” said the source, a reconnaissance expert.
Israel occupied most of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Middle East war. President Hafez Al Assad, father of the current President Bashar Al Assad, launched a failed bid to recapture the territory in 1973, when Egypt held simultaneous offensive against Israel to retake the annexed Sinai peninsula.
A UN-supervised armistice line was drawn in 1974 and the Syrian military has not breached it in any major way since then.
However, the recent operations of Hezbollah and its allies have piled pressure on the Syrian army, which has increasingly been the target of retaliatory Israeli strikes in south Syria.
The Syrian opposition military figure said Hezbollah had all but halted communications with the Syrian army to avoid infiltration or being exposed by any spies that Israel might have among Assad regime forces.
Most of Israel's strikes are focused on Iran-linked convoys moving weapons towards the Golan Heights, with the attacks gradually degrading Syria's once-powerful air defences.
Along the Golan Heights front, Hezbollah and other militia mainly use barracks and other military installations belonging to the Syrian army's Seventh Mechanised Division, as well as Brigade 90 and Brigade 61, the sources said.
The installations include hilltop reconnaissance positions in Deraa province, near the city of Nawa, where underground shelters were built by the Soviets and equipped to withstand heavy attacks.
Last week, two of these positions, Tel Jabieh and Tel Um Hauran, came under reported Israeli air strikes.
