Syria is quietly rebuilding the very military infrastructure that Israel destroyed when the Assad regime collapsed — and the Israeli Air Force knows it. According to a major disclosure published Friday by The Jerusalem Post, Israeli military sources have confirmed that Damascus is gradually reconstituting its radar networks and air-defense systems, less than eighteen months after Israel reduced them to rubble. The warning, buried near the end of a sweeping operational report, carries a pointed strategic implication: Israel stands ready to strike again, and the main constraint is not capability — it is a green light from Washington.
The disclosure came wrapped in a broader set of statistics the Israel Defense Forces released about the scale of its air campaign since October 7, 2023. The Israeli Air Force dropped 135,000 bombs across multiple fronts over the course of the conflict, The Jerusalem Post reported, citing IDF figures. Of those, 23,860 strikes were called in directly by ground forces requiring immediate fire support during operations in Gaza and Lebanon — a figure that illustrates how completely air and ground operations have merged since the war began.
Yet it is the Syria passage that stands out. When Bashar al-Assad's government fell in December 2024, the Israeli Air Force moved quickly, destroying the bulk of Syria's strategic long-range weapons and most of its functioning air-defense batteries, The Jerusalem Post reported. The strikes left the new government led by Ahmad al-Sharaa militarily exposed. Now, according to Israeli air force sources cited by the paper, that exposure is narrowing.
The timing is delicate. Washington is still in the process of sizing up the al-Sharaa government and has effectively blocked Israel from significant military action inside Syria in recent months, permitting Jerusalem only to maintain a buffer zone in the country's south, The Jerusalem Post reported. That American restraint is the thread on which the current equilibrium hangs. Should U.S. policy shift — or should Israel judge that Syria's military rebuild has crossed a threshold it cannot accept — the conditions for renewed Israeli strikes would fall into place rapidly.
Israel's posture, in other words, is one of armed patience. The air force has already demonstrated it can reach anywhere in the region: The Jerusalem Post noted that Israeli aircraft now fly at will over Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and achieved what the IDF described as total air supremacy over Iran in both June 2025 and June 2026 without losing a single piloted aircraft. Against that backdrop, a Syrian air-defense system that is still in the early stages of reconstruction does not represent a deterrent. It represents a target on a timer.
Whether that timer runs out depends less on Damascus than on a phone call from Washington. Israel has the hardware, the doctrine, and the operational experience. What it is waiting for, according to the picture that emerges from The Jerusalem Post's reporting, is the political opening — or the provocation — that makes the next strike unavoidable.
Photo: IDF, Syria