Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi meets with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Tehran, Iran May 8, 2022. Official Presidential website/Handout via REUTERS

i24 News – Syrians reportedly asked Iran not to launch attacks against Israel from their territory to avoid an all-out war when the country is already weakened, The New York Times reported Friday, citing a source in Damascus.

An Iran-led alliance met virtually about one year ago, discussing how to respond to strikes attributed to the Jewish state carried out in Syria against Iranian interests, according to Gheis Ghoreishi, an analyst close to the Iranian government.

Military experts from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Al-Quds Force branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps participated in the meeting.

During the discussion, Syrian officials reportedly asked Iran and its proxies not to carry out attacks against Israel from its territory. This led to the Tehran-led axis retaliating against Israeli strikes by attacking United States bases, the report continued, reportedly in hopes that the US would pressure Israel into halting its strikes on Syria.

Senior US officials told the Times that the August 15 drone attacks on Syria’s al-Tanf base — which houses US troops — were more sophisticated than previous attacks and may have been an Iranian attempt to respond to an earlier airstrike attributed to Israel.

The day before the drone strike, at least three Syrian soldiers were killed in suspected Israeli airstrikes targeting sites near Tartous on the Syrian coast and near Damascus, according to the Syrian news agency SANA.