120 commandos deep inside Syria: IDF reveals daring raid on Iranian missile factory

The Israeli Air Force on Thursday revealed details and footage from one of its most daring and complex commando operations ever, in which 120 members of special forces units raided and destroyed an underground Iranian missile manufacturing plant deep in Syria in September.

At the time, the regime of Bashar al-Assad was still in power in Syria, and Israel had not yet launched its devastating campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Some of the details of the September 8 operation previously reported by foreign media outlets — including the name of the raid — are now known to have been wrong, or slightly incorrect.

The raid — dubbed internally by the Israel Defense Forces “Operation Many Ways” —  was aimed at destroying an underground facility used by Iranian forces to manufacture precision missiles for Hezbollah in Lebanon and for the Assad regime in Syria.

The facility, codenamed by the military “Deep Layer,” was dug into a mountain at the Scientific Studies and Research Center, known as CERS or SSRC, in the Masyaf area of Syria, west of Hama. The site lies more than 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the Israeli border, and some 45 kilometers (28 miles) from Syria’s western coastline.

The IDF said the site was Iran’s “flagship project” in its effort to arm Hezbollah.

The military said the raid was carried out successfully by the IAF’s elite Shaldag unit, along with the search and rescue Unit 669. No soldiers were injured during the entire operation.

Footage from an Israeli Air Force commando raid against an Iranian missile manufacturing site near Masyaf, Syria, September 8, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

The revelation of the raid comes weeks after the fall of the Assad regime, which was closely aligned with Iran. Assad allowed Iran to use Syria to manufacture and deliver weapons to Hezbollah. Iranian forces have since withdrawn from Syria after losing their close ally.

The Iranian facility

Iran began planning “Deep Layer” in 2017, after an Israeli airstrike that same year at CERS took out a rocket engine manufacturing site that was stationed aboveground, according to the military.

The aboveground manufacturing site had been used to supply Hezbollah with many of the projectiles it would eventually launch at Israel when it started firing at northern Israel on October 8, 2023, a day after the Hamas invasion in the south.

The destruction of that site, as well as other IDF strikes in Syria targeting weapon shipments to Hezbollah, led Iran to rethink its strategy, according to the military, and to establish a new underground facility that would be safe from Israeli strikes.

The site that Iran constructed was 70-130 (230-430) meters underground and thus virtually impossible to destroy from the air.

Iranian digging into the mountain at the research center began in late 2017. The IDF said it had intelligence on the facility from the moment construction began.

By 2021, Iran had completed the digging and construction work and began bringing in equipment for mass-producing missiles. Over the following years, equipment continued to be delivered, and tests were carried out on the production line.

The facility was built in the shape of a horseshoe, with one entrance on the side of the mountain for raw materials and an exit nearby for the completed missiles. A third entrance adjacent to those two was used for logistics and to reach offices inside the facility. The office section also connected to the manufacturing section inside.

Along the horseshoe were at least 16 rooms housing the production line for the missiles, from planetary mixers for the rocket fuel to missile body construction and paint rooms.

The facility was not yet completely active when Israel launched its operation against it, but according to the military, it was at the final stages of being declared operational by Iran. At least two missiles had been successfully manufactured as part of testing, and rocket engines were already being mass produced.

The IDF has assessed that the facility would have been used to produce between 100 and 300 missiles a year, including long-range missiles with ranges of up to 300 kilometers, precision-guided missiles with ranges of up to 130 kilometers, and short-range rockets with ranges of 40-70 kilometers.

According to the IDF’s assessments, the facility, located relatively close to the border with Lebanon, was meant to replace Iran’s method of trucking missiles and parts from its own territory to Lebanon via Syria. Such convoys were repeatedly struck by the IAF over the years. The distance the weapons would need to travel from the new facility to reach Hezbollah would be far shorter.

Preparations to strike

The general idea of raiding and destroying the facility began to take form years ago, but only when the current multifront war began did top officials begin to consider it as a serious possibility.

The IAF’s Shaldag was chosen for the role because of its capabilities and training, and because the IAF thought it would be more efficient to carry out the raid using its own special forces rather than a commando unit from the Ground Forces or the Navy.

Two months before the raid was carried out, Shaldag and Unit 669 members were already training for the operation by drilling various models and scenarios, to ensure that if anything did not go to plan there would always be a backup.

Training was held concurrently with the campaign against Hamas in Gaza and while the IAF was conducting strikes in Lebanon and defending against daily barrages of rockets and drones by Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias.

The training itself was considered by the IAF to be something of a high risk, as it took up a lot of attention and resources amid the war and, if the raid had not been carried out, it would have been a waste of time.

Intelligence efforts were ramped up ahead of the operation in order to plan where exactly the soldiers would land, how they would enter and destroy the facility, what the layout of the site looked like and what sort of threats they could face — including Syrian air defense systems and ground forces.

Lastly, the timing of the operation needed to be determined. September 8 was chosen due to a myriad of reasons, among them the clear weather conditions for IAF helicopters carrying the troops.

A timeline of the raid

In the evening of September 8, 100 members of Shaldag and another 20 members of Unit 669 boarded four CH-53 “Yasur” heavy transport helicopters and set off from an airbase in Israel for Syria.

Joining them were another two attack helicopters to provide close air support, 21 fighter jets, five drones and 14 spy planes and other aircraft. Another 30 aircraft waited in Israel on standby in case something did not go to plan.

The six helicopters flew over the Mediterranean Sea far off the coast of Lebanon, before crossing into Syria above its own coastline. The choppers flew unusually low in order to evade Syrian radars and air defense systems.

At the time, the Masyaf area had the second-highest concentration of air defenses in Syria, surpassed only by Damascus, according to the IDF, with dozens of radars and defense systems that could detect and engage Israeli aircraft. Some of those radars had been destroyed in previous IAF strikes in Syria, and had not been repaired by September 8.

Adding to the complexity of the raid, Russian forces maintained a substantial military presence on the Syrian coast, with their own air defense systems.

It took just 18 minutes for the helicopters to fly from the coast to the facility, during which the aircraft were not detected. At the same time, IAF fighter jets and drones along with Navy missile boats launched a major wave of strikes targeting both the CERS facility and several other sites in Syria. The strikes were intended to both mask the approach of the helicopters and trick the Syrian military into believing this was a regular Israeli attack, hundreds of which had been carried out over the years, including at Masyaf.

Some of the strikes that night were aimed at luring Syrian soldiers away from CERS, though dozens were identified beginning to approach the facility as the raid began. Strikes were also carried out against the roads and anyone trying to reach the site.

The first of the CH-53 “Yasur” helicopters landed close to the entrance, dropping off several Shaldag commandos, while another two choppers simultaneously landed at another position in the area overlooking the science center. The fourth helicopter waited behind for several minutes before landing where the first one had, dropping off additional troops.

The four helicopters then flew away to other positions in the area, where they landed and waited for over two hours for the 100 commandos to carry out their mission.

The 20 Unit 669 members, still on board the choppers, were to spring into action if any of the commandos were wounded. The plan was to treat any wounded soldiers, but not to leave until the end of the mission. Therefore, Unit 669 brought along additional medical equipment to act as a makeshift hospital in the event of an injury.

At the facility, a first team of commandos began to secure the area while a second team advanced toward the entrance, killing two guards. Another team set up on a nearby hill, from which they flew a small drone to observe the raid and eliminate anyone approaching the facility.

At nighttime, Syrian soldiers would lock the three entrances to the facility and guard the perimeter. The IDF said there were fewer guards at the site than would have likely been had the facility already been active, and no one was inside when the raid was carried out.

One of the central challenges of the mission was getting through the heavy duty doors at the entrance to the underground site. According to officers who participated in the planning and the mission itself, this was no easy task.

At the mission’s 50-minute mark, the first team of commandos managed to break through one of the entrances — the one used for logistics and to reach the offices. The soldiers entered the site and reached the two production entrances — the horseshoe — opening them using forklifts that were inside the facility. The IDF had known in advance that the facility had such equipment, and had sent some of the commandos participating in the raid to get forklift certification.

At the same time, another team of commandos carrying explosives arrived at the entrances. The troops had brought a quad bike with them in one of the choppers to enable them to quickly move through the facility to plant the explosives.

Some 50 commandos then moved along the facility’s production line, attaching bombs to all of the equipment, and especially the three planetary mixers. The other 50 waited outside and continued to keep the area clear by scanning the area and firing at threats.

At the same time, fighter jets continued to pound the surrounding region to prevent dozens of people identified on the ground — apparently Syrian soldiers — from approaching. In all, 49 munitions were used by IAF aircraft during the raid.

After the commandos had rigged up all the explosives — around 300 kilograms’ (660 pounds’) worth — to a remote detonator planted at the entrance to the site, all 100 evacuated to the initial landing site. The helicopters flew in from their waiting positions, picking up the soldiers after two and a half hours on the ground.

As they boarded, Shaldag’s chief explosives specialist set off the bombs — a blast with an estimated as the equivalent of one ton of explosives, when factoring in the explosive material inside the facility.

Soldiers who participated in the operation said the underground blast was not only visible but could be felt as well, like “a mini earthquake.”

The helicopters then flew away from the facility back toward the sea, and then to Israel. Some of their equipment, including the Quad Bike, was left behind.

Hundreds of Syrian soldiers reached CERS around an hour after the troops left, according to the military, highlighting time crunch for the operation.

The IDF assessed that it killed some 30 guards and Syrian soldiers during the entire operation. Syrian media at the time reported 14 dead and 43 wounded.

The soldiers also captured some intelligence documents at the facility, which the military said proved its assessments that the site was near being operational.

Currently, the IDF said the underground site is not in use, and Iran has withdrawn from Syria following the fall of the Assad regime.