At least fourteen people are reported killed and 43 wounded in the airstrike attributed to Israel on Syria on Sunday night. The attack hit various targets in the Hama, Homs, Damascus, and Tartus governates, but the focus was on CERS (the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center) in the Masyaf district.
CERS, which has about 20,000 employees according to the Alma Research and Education Center in Israel, is actually the military industry of the Assad regime in Syria. It was founded in 1971, and, until the civil war in Syria, it was one of the leading such institutes in the Middle East. According to Alma, after the civil war broke out, it became a platform for collaboration between President Assad, Iran, and Hezbollah.
Over the years, the center has been responsible for the development and production of advanced weaponry, such as the Fateh-110 short-range ballistic missile used by Hezbollah. "These are the heart of the collaboration between Syria, Iran and Hezbollah on turning missiles into precision guided weapons," Alma explains. The institute also warns that the Syrian center "is responsible for the development and production of chemical, biological, and potentially even nuclear weapons." It is therefore unsurprising that, since 2013, attacks on CERS targets have taken place that are attributed to Israel.
In 2022, then minister of defense Benny Gantz, in a speech at a New York conference, revealed more than ten CERS installations responsible for producing weapons for Assad’s army. The focus of the activity highlighted in that speech was Masyaf, where the presence of pro-Iranian militias, the Revolutionary Guards, and Iranian weapons experts has expanded during the civil war. "In line with Soleimani’s vision," Gantz said, referring to Qasem Soleimani, an officer in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who was killed by the US in 2020, "Iran turned the installation in Masyaf into an installation for the production of medium- and long-range precision missiles for Hezbollah and the pro-Iranian militias."
"CERS is a center for scientific research that deals in military and weapons R&D of various kinds - missiles, rockets, UAVs, cruise missiles, everything to do with space, inertial navigation, which is important for the Fateh-110," Dr. Yehoshua Kalisky, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, told "Globes".
"There’s scientific research there that serves as a cloak for research with a military orientation," Kalisky says. "They have extensive collaborations with scientists from overseas, in research that is supposedly scientific, in plasma physics, for example, which sounds innocent, but from which other things can be learned. These are advanced research projects in physics, chemistry and biology with military implications. I presume that the chemical weapons that Assad produced came form there. That’s where they developed the barrels of explosives that in the end became Hezbollah’s Burkan missiles. They are in close touch with Iran, and Iranian advanced technologies are brought there, and thence to Hezbollah."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on September 10, 2024.
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