The war with Iran has convinced the Syrian government to change its relations with Israel. When Israeli planes flew through Syria to Iran for 12 days, it was not only in Tehran that the developments were closely followed.

In Damascus, in the office of Ahmad al-Julani, the leader of Syria, the events were closely monitored. Professor Amatzia Baram of Haifa University told Maariv that the conclusions reached by the Syrian leader could help stabilize Israel’s northern border for years to come.

“If I were in al-Julani’s place, I would tell my people that even if I could make things difficult for the Israeli Air Force, I am not interested,” Baram explains the new Syrian logic. “I have an interest in the Israelis striking Iran as many times as possible.”

The Syrian interest is clear: every strike on Iran weakens the main strategic rival of the new regime in Damascus. “Every strike on Iran is a net gain for the Julani regime,” Baram argues, explaining that this is why the Syrians would not interfere with the Israeli operation.

But beyond the obvious geopolitical interest, the Israeli operation taught Julani two key lessons about Israel’s capabilities.

The first concerns the range of the Israeli Air Force.

“Israel is capable of maintaining a continuous air presence over Iranian territory for 12 days at a distance of almost 2,000 kilometers, essentially unhindered,” Baram emphasizes. “This is something that Julani now knows, understands, and is aware of.”

The second lesson concerns Israel’s intelligence capabilities.

The operation demonstrated how precisely and deeply Israel can strike into the heart of enemy territory. “The fact that Israel is able to eliminate the entire top Iranian military leadership in two or three days, and then strike the most important bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” Baram lists, “underlines the depth of the intelligence capabilities.” But the most impressive thing is the surgical precision of the actions. “They get to their apartments from 2,000 or 1,500 kilometers away, hit the apartment precisely and kill a high-ranking scientist or officer,” Baram says. “I imagine that Julani wrote this down in a notebook that he keeps in the left pocket of his jacket.”

The Syrian conclusion is clear and alarming:

“Maybe I am wrong and we do not have such capabilities, but if I were Julani, I would come to the conclusion that Israel can get to me at any moment,” Baram asserts. “Julani understands that if he does not want to commit suicide, it is better for him not to mess with us.”

However, Baram emphasizes that even without fear of Israel, Julani has no real interest in entering into conflict with us. “He is not a Palestinian. We did not take away from him what he considers his historical homeland. We took the Golan Heights from Assad, but the Golan Heights are not a sufficient reason for a bloody conflict: after all, under the Assad family, under Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar, they de facto recognized that the Golan Heights are ours, since they did not try to return them after 1973, and every Syrian knows this. That is, there is already a half-century precedent that the Syrian regime has resigned itself to Israeli control over the Golan Heights. Syrian nationalists and jihadists who try to incite the public against Julani for not starting a destructive war to liberate the Golan Heights are met with indifference.”