Israel and Syria’s Shared Fight Against Hezbollah

On April 19, Syria’s Interior Ministry announced that it had thwarted a sabotage plot in Quneitra province orchestrated by a cell linked to Hezbollah. According to Syrian authorities, the operatives had disguised a civilian transport vehicle to conceal rocket-launching equipment for a surprise attack. The rockets reportedly bore the slogan “Victory for our brothers in Lebanon and Palestine.” Days earlier, Syrian authorities announced that they had also disrupted a plot targeting a religious figure in Damascus, arresting suspects who the Interior Ministry said were linked to Hezbollah. The reported target, Rabbi Michael Khoury, is one of numerous Jewish communal leaders to have visited Syria following the fall of Assad and in December had been part of a delegation of Syrian American Jews attending the reopening of the Elfrange Synagogue in the Syrian capital.

Syria’s leadership, despite its constraints, is beginning to show a measurable willingness to curb Hezbollah’s footprint on its territory. The state has interdicted hundreds of weapons and rockets destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon since Shaara took power. The shift may be gratifying to Israel, but it is less about any sort of alignment with Israel than it is about converging interests. On the contrary, Syria and Israel have clashed repeatedly, especially over the status of the former’s Druze minority. Yet Shaara understands that allowing Hezbollah to exploit Syrian territory as a smuggling route would entrench the group’s presence and perpetuate instability inside a state struggling to reassert control. Sharaa himself has framed his actions as an attempt to “save the region” by preventing Syrian territory from becoming a launchpad for Hezbollah attacks.

This convergence of interests hardly erases the deep mistrust between the two countries. But it does create an opening for cooperation based on concern about a common threat. Sharaa has avoided naming Hezbollah explicitly as an adversary, yet Syria’s own security apparatus has warned that the group’s presence on the border with Syria “has become a threat.” It has also linked Hezbollah’s local networks to “sabotage cells” aimed at “undermining stability.” In practice, that cooperation could take the shape of deconfliction channels and intelligence sharing through intermediaries, particularly when it comes to the smuggling routes that Hezbollah uses in Syria to rearm.

For many Syrians, hostility toward Hezbollah goes much deeper than a concern about weapons trafficking. Syrians consider the group inseparable from the late Assad regime, sharing its complicity in massacres carried out during the civil war. That anger is spilling into public life. At a recent basketball game in Damascus between the Syrian and Lebanese national teams, what began as a show of reconciliation turned into a venting of enmity. Sharaa himself was in attendance and spoke of “putting an end to the tragedies” of both countries, yet thousands in the stands erupted into a chant of “God curse your soul, Nasrallah,” a direct rebuke of former Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and a reminder that, for many Syrians, the wounds of the group’s role in the conflict remain far from healed.

Under Assad, Hezbollah embedded itself deeply inside the Syrian state. At its peak in 2017, the group maintained an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 fighters in Syria. Hezbollah also recruited Syrians and cultivated local auxiliaries, including formations such as the so-called Golan File in southern Syria, positioned near the Golan Heights to threaten Israel.

After Assad fled to Moscow in December 2024, Hezbollah shifted from overt military entrenchment to a shadowy model built on covert local cells such as the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria, which have since claimed attacks against Israel launched from southern Syria and framed Sharaa as a “puppet for the Turkish, American, and Israeli security apparatuses who wants to bury the resistance identity in Syria.”

In one account carried by the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, an Iraqi official described a quiet exchange with Iranians over a shipment of weapons. The Iraqi was told that the Iranians and Hezbollah “have smuggling networks they rely on. … There are those who can deliver the shipments all the way to Damascus.” The official described a network stitched together from the remnants of the Assad regime and veteran traffickers—“individuals from different sectarian backgrounds and nationalities … some with long experience along smuggling lines.” If pockets of resistance to Sharaa’s government persist, this ecosystem has room to breathe and to aid Hezbollah’s rearmament and regeneration.

Hezbollah appears to recognize that restoring the old order may be out of reach. Its objective now is more pragmatic, focused on preserving access and ensuring that Syria remains usable as a conduit—even in a hostile political environment.

The new Syrian state holds territory in fragments—present in many places but in firm control of only a few. Units cycle from one flashpoint to the next, chasing Islamic State cells in the center, maintaining tense lines with the Syrian Democratic Forces in the northeast, and navigating friction with Druze factions in the south. These thinly spread forces are not sufficient to fully control Syria’s porous borders.

What complicates matters for Syria, and by extension Israel, is Lebanon’s inaction against Hezbollah. Syrian outlets aligned with Sharaa have continuously reiterated that “the Lebanese government must be firm and serious” in disarming Hezbollah. On social media, the language is less diplomatic. Syrian analysts have pointed to Hezbollah’s rearmament to argue that cooperation with Beirut is futile and that the “Syrian army needs to advance into Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah itself.”

This is where Israeli and Syrian interests most clearly converge, but so far convergence has not translated into cooperation. Over the past year, efforts to bridge the gap between the two countries “have stalled,” according to Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani. This tension has eroded what had been a tentative opening, particularly during the period when Sharaa publicly hinted at normalization with Israel.

Israel’s distrust stems from Sharaa’s militant past and fears that foreign jihadis still operate within his ranks, all compounded by his backing from Turkey. Israel, for its part, has waged a sweeping campaign across Syria—launching hundreds of strikes and stepping in to back Druze factions in Suwayda against the government. Damascus has cast these moves as an attempt to fracture the state through armed proxies. That divide has fueled deepening animosity where even Syrian soldiers have been filmed chanting slogans tied to Hamas, revealing how, for both sides, the situation remains fragile and combustible.

Despite this, Israeli media and defense reporting suggest that at least some Israeli officials view Syria’s leadership favorably on the issue of interdicting Hezbollah’s weapons smuggling. Reportedly, the Israeli military had given Sharaa and his forces “very high marks” for preventing Iran and Hezbollah from smuggling arms into Lebanon.

Moving forward, Isreal would like to see Damascus pursue Hezbollah more aggressively, moving beyond episodic seizures toward a sustained effort to dismantle the group’s smuggling networks. This would involve targeting the facilitators, financial channels, and local intermediaries that continue to enable Hezbollah operations. Israel, for its part, will continue to act against high-value threats in Syria. But it should avoid steps that could prove destabilizing to the Syrian state. The issue of the Druze, for example—while critical to Israel—should be addressed through the September 2025 U.S.-backed arrangement in which Israel plays a supportive role, rather than through independent Druze armed factions.

If there is to be further progress, it depends on Washington. Over the past year, U.S.-mediated mechanisms have emerged to manage friction and prevent escalation. Now, the United States could help pressure both sides to work together more effectively. Indirect coordination or tacit understandings about red lines could significantly reduce friction while tightening constraints on Hezbollah’s movement in Syria. Crucially, Israel could provide Damascus with intelligence that would help it crack down on Hezbollah-linked networks, particularly those tied to weapons transfers and cross-border operations.

Even limited alignment between Israel and Syria can begin to narrow the space that Hezbollah has exploited. Over time, sustained coordination and small demonstrations of good faith could lay the groundwork for something more durable. Normalization may be distant, but incremental progress can gradually expand the constituency willing to consider it.