Atop Mount Hermon, where the borders of Israel, Syria and Lebanon converge at nearly 2,800 metres, Benjamin Netanyahu stood beside his defence minister on Wednesday and made a declaration that reverberated across the Middle East: Iran's Islamic Republic, he said, was on the verge of collapse. "We are very close to that," he told Israeli troops stationed in territory that Syria regards as its own. The visit was his third to the area since December 2024, when Israeli forces first occupied a buffer zone that United Nations peacekeepers had patrolled since 1974, following the sudden fall of longtime Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad. Damascus responded with sharp condemnation.

Syria's foreign ministry described Netanyahu's presence on Mount Hermon as "a blatant violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic and of international law." The rebuke reflects a broader tension: Israel argues that the so-called security zone in southern Syria is a military necessity, while Syria's new government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa, insists that no foreign army has the right to occupy its land. Defence Minister Israel Katz underscored Israel's intentions in a video message filmed on the mountain and addressed directly to al-Sharaa, whose palace in Damascus lies roughly 35 kilometres away. "We are not moving from here," Katz said.

The rhetoric extended well beyond Syria. Katz reminded viewers that Israel had already struck Iran twice and warned that a third strike remained a possibility. Netanyahu, meanwhile, framed the entire confrontation as a war against what he called an "axis" of Iran-backed armed groups stretching across the region.