Tehran has said it will get back at Israel, but for now it is focused on making diplomatic gains in the area.

Analysts say that Iran may wait to respond to Israel's increased military strikes in Syria and instead choose a more careful plan that fits with its larger goals in the region.


Israel has been going after what it says are military sites in Syria that are run by Iran and its proxies more and more. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in the UK, says that it has done nine of these attacks so far this year.

The Syrian government says that at least five soldiers were hurt in an air attack on Sunday in the province of Homs.

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A short time later, Israel said that it had shot down a drone that had come from Syria and flown into its territory.


Syria has said that Iran's military support for President Bashar al-Assad is not a big reason for it to have a large military presence in the country.


Two members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in another attack on Friday. 

The Iranian media and government praised them as "martyrs" who died fighting "terrorism." The airport in Aleppo stopped working last month after an Israeli attack.

The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Tehran has the right to respond at a time and place of its choosing. 

The government spokesman, Ali Bahadori Jahromi, tweeted that "terrorist actions will not go unanswered."


At the same time, though, both Iran and Syria are taking steps to improve their relationships with their Arab neighbors. Since Iran has shown it is still interested in talking to the West, experts say that its response to Israel might become clear over time.

Abdolrasool Divsallar, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute think tank in Washington, says that an immediate and major escalation is unlikely. This is because the latest strikes are part of a pattern of escalation.


"I think Iran will try to invest more on that side, which is basically normalizing relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia," he told Al Jazeera, referring to the diplomatic reconciliation between the two regional powers last month.


SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES