Israel targets weapons depot in Syria with missile strikes

Israel reportedly conducted airstrikes on Tuesday against a Syrian weapons depot. The strikes have also reportedly struck a weapons storage facility under the control of Iranian forces.

Here's what we know

According to the Washington Post, a British-based monitor of the war in Syria reported that the airstrikes on Syrian posts also hit a weapons storage facility that had been controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Iran has been propping up the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Israel has expressed concern over the influence of Iran in Syria, and its potential use of Syria as a way to smuggle weapons to the Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah. According to the Jerusalem Post, an Iranian cargo jet with connections to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard flew from the Iranian capital of Tehran and landed in the Syrian capital of Damascus on Tuesday before the airstrikes are said to have started.

Israel almost never confirms news of its own airstrikes in Syria, so all reports of these strikes have come from other sources.

The Russian government, which has also been one of Assad's few allies in this nearly eight-year-long civil war, released a statement accusing the Israeli airstrikes of endangering civilian aircraft. This has not been independently confirmed.

In September, the Russian government blamed Israel after Syrian forces shot down a Russian military aircraft during a failed attempt to shoot four Israeli F-16 fighter jets that were conducting a raid.

What else?

On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that despite the United States withdrawing its forces from Syria, the nation of Israel "will not change our consistent policy." He promised to "continue to act against Iran's attempts to entrench itself militarily in Syria," adding that if necessary, Israel would even "expand our actions there."