Eurasia Press & News
- During the Syrian Civil War, which broke out in 2011, the area of south Syria became an arena for the activity of Salafi-jihadist terrorist organizations in addition to Hezbollah and the Iranian Qods Force, which sought to establish another front against Israel based on local operatives and Shi’ite militias.
- The fall of the Assad regime in December 2024 led to the removal of most of the Iranian-backed elements from the Syrian Golan area and to the takeover of south Syria by the rebel forces and the IDF, but new groups began to appear in the area seeking to attack IDF forces stationed in the Syrian Golan and to push them back beyond the border. As a result, the IDF increased its activity to find weapons in south Syria, carried out targeted killings and detained terrorist operatives in the area, some of them belonging to the Qods Force and Hamas.
- At the beginning of 2025, an organization calling itself the Islamic Resistance Front in Syria – Men of Heroism began publishing statements attacking the Israeli presence in Syrian territory and issuing claims of responsibility for military actions targeting IDF forces in south Syria. Despite doubts about its existence and actual support on the ground, the Resistance Front claimed it was organized and structured, cooperating and allied with other groups whose declared goal was to expel the “occupiers” from Syrian soil.
- The Resistance Front also claimed it did not depend on other organizations and was not subordinate to other states, but declared its affiliation with the “resistance axis”[1] and complete support for Iran, Hezbollah and the Palestinian terrorist organizations.
- In ITIC assessment, the Resistance Front may be an attempt by Iran and Hezbollah to reactivate the network they constructed under the Assad regime to attack IDF forces operating in south Syria or inside Israel, and thereby provoke an Israeli military response against the security forces of the al-Shara regime, which would further destabilize Syria. However, despite its prominent presence on social media and the abundance of statements issued in its name, there is still no conclusive evidence that the Resistance Front in fact exists or that it possesses significant military capabilities. Its claims of cooperation and alliances with other organizations in Syria have also not yet materialized.
