Deraa. Demotix/Majid Almustafa. All rights reserved.
On 8 February 2015 Hezbollah, Iranian officers and Syrian forces launched an offensive in the Deraa-Quneitra-Rural Damascus triangle in Syria. Ostensibly, its main goals were to defend the capital, cut off insurgent lines between Deraa and the Golan Heights, and recover ground in Quneitra province. A longer-term objective, however, was to regain control of the border thus opening a new front of ‘resistance’ against Israel.
This, at least, has been stated by several sources close to the so-called ‘Axis of Resistance’—Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. These sources accused Israel and Jordan of trying to set up “buffer zones” inside the Syrian border by sustaining rebel groups like the Southern Front alliance, the Salafi Islamic Front, and Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda.
