Israel says it captured Syrian spy working for Iran

The Israeli military said on Sunday it had captured a Syrian spy for Iran in recent months, thwarting a planned attack by what it described as Iranian terror networks.

The military named the “Iranian terror network operative” as Ali Soleiman al-Assi, a Syrian citizen living in the area of the southern village of Saida.

“His activities included gathering intelligence on IDF (Israeli military) troops in the border area for future terror activity of the network,” it said in a statement.

The military said the operation took place “in recent months,” adding that the Syrian citizen “was detained and transferred for interrogation in Israel”.

The operation “prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the (occupied) Golan Heights.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, had previously reported that Israel had seized a Syrian man on July 19.

“Israeli forces detained a citizen who worked as a driver to transport milk to the capital Damascus,” the war monitor said in July.

It added that the Syrian was detained in the village of al-Razatiya, in a southern province bordering the Golan Heights annexed by Israel.

“An Israeli military force of three cars and an armored vehicle crossed the border, entered the village and took the man to the occupied Golan Heights,” the observatory said.

Since late September Israel has been engaged in full-scale war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah began launching cross-border attacks last year, saying it was acting in support of Palestinian militants Hamas, whose unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7, 2023 triggered the ongoing war in Gaza.

Iran-aligned groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria have also been drawn into the fighting, and Iran and Israel have themselves attacked each other, heightening fears of even wider conflict.