How Israel's actions in Syria cleared safe corridor to establish 'air supremacy' over Iran

Destroying defences has allowed for 'gas station in the sky' to refuel Israeli fighters for regime sorties

An F-15 jet releases a flare as it flies over Gaza, as seen from Israel. Reuters

Israel has managed to establish “air supremacy” over Iran due to its dismantling of Syria’s missile defences in the weeks following the collapse of the Assad regime, military analysts have told The National.

The country’s aerial dominance is now so complete that its air-to-air refuelling tankers are able to circle above Iranian airspace with impunity, Israeli military sources have disclosed.

But that was established only after the country made a critical move of rapidly removing Syria’s surface-to-air missiles, fighters and radars in an operation that began hours after former president Bashar Al Assad fled Damascus on December 8.

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With between 80 per cent and 90 per cent of its missiles destroyed in 480 targeted sorties by the Israeli air force, the threat to aircraft operating in Syrian airspace was removed.

This was crucial in allowing the stealth F-35 fighters to enter Iran last Friday as a crucial component in blinding Tehran’s advanced defences.

An Israeli F-15 fighter jet refuels in the air above Netanya. AFP

Station in the sky

With a combat range of a little over 2,000km, the F-35s would have barely been able to make it to Iran’s border and back without in-flight refuelling.

But with their Boeing 707 tankers able to circle above north-eastern Syria, this allowed the F-35s to enter Iran via northern Iraq in the knowledge they could refuel on their way back from strike missions.

“If you want any loiter time over targets in north-west and west-central Iran, without tanking the F-35 is actually pretty useless because it just doesn't have the fuel for the mission,” said Francis Tusa, editor of the Defence Eye publication. “So they deliberately cleared a route over Syria to create a gas station in the sky for them.”

An air defence radar burns at Mezzeh Air Base in Damascus, Syria, in December. Getty Images

Assad’s opening

The path to Syria was possible only after Israel’s defeat of Hezbollah in the autumn, which had, with its apparent thousands of Iran-supplied missiles, been a major deterrent to an attack on the Tehran regime.

The Israelis then moved very quickly to put plans in place for a major air campaign in the days leading to Mr Al Assad’s fall. This also meant they had to use munitions meant for missions elsewhere in an operation that went largely unnoticed in the post-regime turbulence.

Almost within minutes of Mr Al Assad fleeing Damascus, authorisation was given for the attack to establish a “sterile defence zone” over Syria, which until that point had one of most densely concentrated systems of air defence batteries.

In almost 500 strikes across the country, the Israelis used more than 1,800 bombs and missiles that took out 80 per cent of Syria’s SA-17 and 86 per cent of its SA-22 SAM systems, and destroyed 90 per cent of its MiG-29 fighters and a similar number of Su-24s.

With Syria’s air defences all but destroyed, a safe corridor had been opened up while also shifting the aerial front 700km closer to northern Iran.

With tankers being slow-moving, largely defenceless targets, the corridor was crucial to Israel’s future operations to dominate the skies above Iran.

Crucially, though, it meant Israel’s government knew it could launch its long-planned Iran attack without needing assistance or approval from Washington.

A Russian surface-to-air missile system. AFP

Co-ordinated air attack

Establishing sufficient air superiority now allows the Israeli Air Force to use free-fall bombs rather than expensive stand-off missiles, said Prof Justin Bronk of the Rusi think tank.

With the safe air corridor established, Israel was able to co-ordinate all its combat aircraft, using its F-35s to find and suppress key air defence radar, while its F-16s and F-15s fired stand-off missiles and glide bombs to destroy them.

Simultaneously, Mossad special forces operatives used drones to take out radar, SAM sites and rocket launchers from inside Iran.

The Israeli strikes in late October, in retaliation for Tehran’s mass missile attack in the same month, destroyed a number of long-range air defence radar.

Iran has a large inventory of surface-to-air missiles including the Russian-supplied long-range S-300s and SA-15 short-range SAMs. But with the F-35s able to enter Iran without detection, this allowed them to use their powerful electronic warfare capabilities to locate and jam the SAMs.

With its defences blind, the heavy lifting of the bombing campaign was conducted by F-15s and F-16s carrying precision-guided weapons fired from a distance, such as the Rampage air-launched ballistic missile.

An Israeli strike on the Iranian capital Tehran. AFP

Tankers over Tehran

That has led to what commentators suggest is now Israel’s air supremacy over Iran, in that it totally dominates the skies.

Israeli tankers over the country, suggested Frank Ledwidge, a former military intelligence officer, meant Iranian air defences “have been completely suppressed because they are the most vulnerable aircraft, except helicopters, in an air force’s inventory".

He added: “It’s a huge indicator that Israel’s claims of controlling the air, of essentially air supremacy, is not just rhetoric.”

Bearing in mind the Houthis have shot down 15 advanced $30 million US Reaper drones, Israel’s Heron UAVs cruising over Tehran are a sign of confidence.

“You don't do that unless you have no fear of being engaged,” said Mr Tusa. “It means you have a benign environment, because if you had any thought that there was even a modest surface missile threat, let alone fighter threat, you would not be operating tankers over Iranian airspace."

Losing one would be “a really serious problem”, as Israel has only seven Boeing 707s, an issue that former prime minister Ehud Olmert highlighted to The National in February last year, warning that Israel was incapable of striking Iran as it lacked the key aircraft and bombs.

The stifling of Iran’s air defences indicates Tehran being over-reliant on its proxies or allies for support in case of attack. While it has supplied Russia with hundreds of Shahed drones and short-range missiles, Moscow has given it a few radar that by now could be smoking ruins.