This is what it’s actually like on the ground in the Golan Heights – and why escalation between Israel and Iran is more dangerous than ever

The Israeli attack was the biggest ever it has carried out since the start of the Syrian civil war seven years ago and there is every likelihood of further clashes taking place between the two sides

The escalating military clashes between Israel and Iran are serious, worrying and a rapid manifestation of the insecurity and strife which was always likely to follow Donald Trump’s reneging on the nuclear agreement with Tehran.

Within hours of the US president declaring that he wanted to destroy the deal which had made the world a safer place, Israeli jets had carried out raids inside Syria targeting Iranian positions in the country. This was something Trump’s new national security advisor, John Bolton, had wanted to include in the American strikes last month following the Douma chemical attack, but the demand was seen off by defence secretary General James Mattis and the head of the US military, General Joseph Dunford.

The Israeli strikes which followed Trump’s announcement on Tuesday are believed to have killed nine people, including members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, as well as fighters of Tehran’s allied Hezbollah militia.

There are conflicting accounts of what has followed. The Israelis claimed that Iran had fired missiles into the occupied Golan Heights in response and this led to the next round of Israeli strikes. The Iranians and the Syrian regime insist that that Iranians acted after Israelis bombarded Baath, a town in the demilitarised zone.

The Iranian attack, say the Israelis, was ordered by General Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards, in overall charge of Tehran’s military mission in Iraq and Syria, a bête noire of Iran’s opponents and a powerful influence in the country’s political scene.

Just how much destruction has been caused by the exchanges remains unclear. Some of the Iranian missiles, according to the Israelis, were shot down by the Iron Dome defence system, but a few got through and caused “some damage” to military installations. The Israeli missiles, claimed defence minister Avigdor Lieberman, struck “almost all Iranian installations in Syria”. However, the operation was preceded by a meeting between Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu in Moscow and there is a possibility that Moscow’s ally Tehran was aware that an attack was forthcoming. There are no reports, so far, of Iranian casualties.

The Israeli attack, nevertheless, was the biggest ever it has carried out since the start of the Syrian civil war seven years ago and there is every likelihood of further clashes taking place between the two sides. Israel, which considers Iran an existential enemy, has been repeatedly claiming there is an Iranian threat across the Syrian border and has been engaged in a low-profile proxy war.

Israeli hospitals, civilian and military, in the Golan area have been providing medical treatment for Syrians from across the border for several years. The majority of patients have been civilians, but one came across rebel fighters as well. I recall one young man recovering at a hospital in Safed who I had last met manning a mortar battery near Aleppo. These Sunni rebels were of value to the Israelis as they were fighting not just forces of the Assad regime but Hezbollah and the Iranians.

I met patients who made little secret of belonging to hardline jihadist groups. There had been scuffles in some wards between extremist and moderate fighters. Not all of those treated were grateful for the medical care they received; some have threatened the Israeli staff: “We will come back and slaughter you all”.

The former Israeli defence minister Moshe Ya’alon has publicly confirmed that Israel was treating these fighters under a deal to help protect the border. A major in the Israeli intelligence corps once laid out the Israeli position pointing across the border: “The attacks have been from the regime side, with their Iranian and Hezbollah contingents, not from the rebels.” In Syria, she added “the West thinks Sunni jihadist terrorists are worse than Shia terrorists. We take a different view.”

What was going on at the Golan did not get much international publicity apart from episodes like the departure of Priti Patel as international development secretary after she secretly visited an Israeli army field hospital on the Golan. Even on that occasion, however, neither Patel nor Downing Street mentioned that the hospital treated rebel fighters.

The Israelis have long carried out focused air strikes across the border killing, among others, General Mohammed Ali Allah Dadi, of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Jihad Mughniyeh, who headed the Hezbollah forces on the Golan, and Colonel Mehdi Dehgham, who led the Quds Force drones unit.

But there was an awareness by both sides that the confrontation should not be pushed beyond a certain point. There were, for instance, said to have been sightings of Gen Soleimani, but the Israelis desisted from targeting him. The Obama and Putin administrations had cautioned Israel and Iran repeatedly, and respectively, against action which may trigger a wider conflict.

Following the latest clashes Israeli defence minister Lieberman stated: “I hope that we have finished this chapter and everyone got the message.” His country had “no interest in escalation”.

But the dynamics have changed. In the past the US had urged restraint on Israel: now the Trump administration has people who want to promote violence. Shaul Mofatz, a former Israeli defence minister and chief of staff, revealed how national security adviser Bolton, while US ambassador to the UN, pressed Israel to bomb Iran. Mofatz had declined, saying: “I don’t think it is a smart move.”

Similar good sense will now need to prevail as Donald Trump, who has been crowing about selling billions of dollars of American weapons in the Middle East, creates the combustible conditions for fear, instability and aggression.