Date: Apr 25, 2018 Source: The Daily Star Israel threatens to strike S-300 systems in Syria Agence France Presse OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said Tuesday that his country would attack Russian S-300 air defense systems in Syria if they were used against Israeli targets. His remarks came a day after the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that Moscow could soon start to deliver S-300 systems to its ally Damascus and cited a source as warning of “catastrophic” consequences if they were attacked. “What’s important to us is that the defensive weapons the Russians are giving Syria won’t be used against us,” Lieberman told the news website Ynet. “If they’re used against us, we’ll act against them.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this month that no decision had yet been taken on the S-300 missiles. The Russians have deployed the S-300 around their own Tartous naval base on Syria’s Mediterranean coast and the more advanced S-400 at their Hmeimim air base in western Syria. “We have an open line; we really do have discourse” with the Russians, Lieberman said, noting that their systems had never been used against Israel. “For several years we’ve been constantly in coordination and able to avoid friction with the Russians.” Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the armistice line on the sector of the Golan Heights that the Jewish state seized from its neighbor in 1967 was largely quiet for decades until the Syrian civil war broke out in 2011. The Israeli side of the Golan has since seen regular spillover fire and Israel has carried out dozens of airstrikes on Syrian armed forces and their allies. Israel says its strikes aim to stop advanced weapons deliveries to Hezbollah.