Israel hits Hezballah heavies as they attempted to travel to Iran

Newsweek:

Several leaders of Hezbollah have reportedly been hit by an Israeli airstrike on the Syrian capital of Damascus.

The information was given to Newsweek from a Department of Defense source with access to the information from Israeli senior military officers with direct knowledge of the attack. Israel's air strike was conducted minutes after the leaders boarded a plane bound for Iran.

Several Iranian ammunition supply points were also a target of the bombing, the source said. The supply points contained valuable, GPS-guided ammunition from 2017, some of the best available to the Iranian army and Hezbollah.

Syrian military confirmed via Syrian state media that an arms depot was hit in the attack and that three soldiers were wounded, Reuters reports.

"Our air defenses confronted hostile missiles launched by Israeli war planes from above the Lebanese territories and downed most of them before reaching their targets,” the military source said.
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The Jerusalem Post reported:

Syrian air defense confronted a complex threat over Damascus Tuesday night. It comes after several months of relative quiet for Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime, which is grappling with a crises in eastern Syria as the US withdraws.

The airstrikes took place as the Syrian state media was seeking to highlight Christmas in Syria. Syria was witnessing a “victory over terrorism,” SANA said. However the airstrikes were the most serious since September when an Israeli airstrike targeted Latakia and resulted in Syrian air defense shooting down a Russian IL-20 aircraft. That incident caused Moscow to give Syria the S-300 system and warn Israeli “hotheads” against further incidents.
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Israel has said it struck 200 targets in the last two years throughout Syria. Many of these were near Damascus according to local reports. But Syria thinks that the S-300 and Russia’s support will reduce the airstrikes.

Instead it appears Syria has not been successful at preventing an airstrike around Damascus. Even though its state media claims it intercepted all the missiles fired at targets near Damascus on December 25, that assertion is unlikely.

The Syrian government must now ask itself if Russia is serious about training it to use the S-300 and if the S-300 is effective.

These two issues relate to how Damascus will concentrate the challenges it still faces. Israel has said that as the US withdraws, Jerusalem will continue to challenge Iran in Syria. In addition there are reports that Russia could offer to help reduce Iranian influence or presence in Syria in return for something.
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The Israeli air attack was launched through Lebanon.  I suspect the attacks on Hezballah were tied to the terror tunnels.   The attacks on the missile storage facilities appear to be part of an ongoing operation against Iranian attempts to arm Hezballah for attacks on Israel.