The commandos came in helicopters, on a nearly moonless night.
The guards outside the secret weapons lab in northwestern Syria had already been killed in a short series of airstrikes when the thrumming of Israeli Air Force helicopters approached.
At first the Sept. 8 strike seemed like many others carried out by Israel, which had long had the facility in its sights. Israeli officials believed that Iran and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah planned to manufacture a new generation of precision missiles there.
But this was a different kind of operation. The helicopters flew low, without lights. Soon dozens of camouflage-clad commandos were rappelling down cables and rushing into the complex, which in places was more than 200 feet underground, according to U.S., European and Israeli officials.
What followed was one of the most daring Israeli military operations against Hezbollah in years.
In the panoply of Israeli strikes and assassinations since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, the commando raid stands out. Israel sent special operations troops, boots on the ground, into a sovereign country to carry out a mission.
It initially looked to be a one-off attack on a Hezbollah weapons facility, but it now appears to have been the opening salvo in a covert-in-name-only campaign against the Iranian proxy group.
Hezbollah began attacking northern Israel soon after Oct. 7, and the two sides have been exchanging fire ever since. Then on Sept. 17, about a week after the raid, thousands of pagers carried by Hezbollah members exploded across Lebanon. The next day, hundreds of walkie-talkies used by the militants detonated. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied a role in the attacks, which killed dozens of people and injured more than 3,000.
Israel then launched a heavy bombing campaign that has killed hundreds of people in Lebanon.
How Hezbollah and Iran will react remains an open question. Hezbollah has yet to mount an effective counterattack, but American officials believe the group wants vengeance for the string of attacks that began with the raid on the Syrian facility.
Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, vowed that Israel would “face just retribution and a bitter reckoning.”
“This retribution will come,” he said last week. “Its manner, size, how and where — these are things we will certainly keep to ourselves, in the narrowest circles even among us.”
This account of the raid is based on interviews with U.S., European and Israeli officials who are familiar with aspects of the operation. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
Before conducting the raid, Israel notified senior American officials, including Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, the head of United States Central Command, according to a U.S. official. That Sunday, General Kurilla was in Israel visiting the deep-underground war room of the Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Command, where he was presented with the military’s operational plans for countering Hezbollah, according to the Israeli military.
Israeli intelligence had information about the location of the guard posts and the layout of the facility. After the guards were killed that Sunday night, the 100 or so Israeli commandos who rappelled down from the helicopters were able to enter the site unchallenged.
Using stolen maps, the commandos split into teams, each tasked with destroying a different part of the facility.
The raid lasted about 15 minutes.
The factory, which is near the city of Masyaf in northwestern Syria, is officially known as the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. But while nominally controlled by the Syrian Ministry of Defense, Western officials say Hezbollah and Iran have taken over operations.
It is only about 30 miles from the Lebanese border, which is why, Israeli and American officials say, Hezbollah manufactures weapons there instead of in Iran. Transporting missiles and weapons from Iran to Lebanon is a more than 1,000-mile odyssey with an array of challenges.
For years, Israel has been tracking, and trying to destroy, the facility and those associated with it. In 2018, Aziz Asbar, one of Syria’s most important rocket scientists, was killed in Masyaf by a car bomb apparently planted by the Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
A year earlier, Israeli warplanes also struck Masyaf, killing two people, according to Syrian officials, as part of Israel’s efforts to prevent Syria and Hezbollah from acquiring advanced weapons.
Before the Syrian civil war began in 2011, chemical weapons were also made at the Masyaf facility, but that work has stopped, U.S. officials said.
In recent years, the Syrian government has moved equipment to the well-protected site as it consolidated its missile production capability. And Iran and Hezbollah began upgrading the underground area that was struck this month. Hezbollah intended to use the missiles being developed against Israel, according to officials briefed on the intelligence.
Viewed in that light, the Sept. 8 attack was both a continuation of Israel’s long-running efforts to destroy the center and an apparent shift in its nearly yearlong war effort from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah.
The strategy, senior Israeli officials told their American colleagues after the raid, reflects the lessons of the Oct. 7 attack. When the Israeli government gathers intelligence that an Iranian proxy is trying to develop a new weapon, the Israeli military will take action to stop it, the officials said.
The strike on Masyaf was also the opening round in a series of attacks aimed at halting Hezbollah’s cross-border missile and drone attacks.
U.S. officials had pressed both Israel and Hezbollah to try to contain a northern front, anxious to stop the war in Gaza from expanding. But Hezbollah’s continued shelling has driven thousands of Israelis from their homes, and pressure has mounted on the Israeli government to stop the attacks. While U.S. officials believe a peace agreement for Gaza is the best way to contain the cross-border violence in the north, the Israeli government opted to intensify its campaign against Hezbollah.
Now, U.S. officials find themselves trying to push for a cease-fire in both Gaza and Lebanon.
The facility in Syria had become a top priority for the Israelis because they feared Hezbollah would be able to make a far more precise weapon and many more missiles there once it was complete.
U.S. and Israeli officials said an important goal of the commando raid was to destroy equipment related to creating explosives for warheads and fueling missiles. The Israeli military believed that destroying the special equipment at the facility could significantly hinder the manufacturing effort.
A breakthrough for Israel came when its signals intelligence agency, known as Unit 8200, obtained detailed plans for the facility through a computer hack, officials said. Unit 8200 is the same unit faulted for Israel’s intelligence failure before Oct. 7.
Three months before the Hamas attacks, a veteran analyst with Unit 8200 warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared ominous. But a colonel in the Israeli military’s Gaza division brushed off the analyst’s concerns, according to encrypted emails viewed by The New York Times.
This time, not only did the spy group get the physical blueprints of the agency, Unit 8200 also learned the location of the guards at the entrances to the underground facility. As a result, the commandos moved swiftly and were headed back to the helicopters within minutes.
The explosives they set began to detonate, dealing a huge setback to Syria, Iran and Hezbollah.
But it was also the opening shots in a new phase of the war, whose end game is anything but certain.
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