Iran using civilian
flights to smuggle arms to Hezbollah – report
WASHINGTON — Iran is using a civilian airline to smuggle
arms to the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, Fox News reported Monday, citing
Western intelligence officials who tracked two unscheduled flights in recent
months.
According to the report, two flights operated by Qeshm
Fars Air flights made trips from Tehran to Beirut, flying an irregular route.
One Boeing 747 flight on July 9 made a stop in Damascus, Syria. The second
flight on August 4, directly from Tehran to Beirut, but followed “a slightly
irregular route north of Syria,” Fox said.
The intelligence officials told Fox the flights were
believed to be carrying components for manufacturing precise weapons in Iranian
factories inside Lebanon.
“The Iranians are trying to come up with new ways and
routes to smuggle weapons from Iran to its allies in the Middle East, testing
and defying the West’s abilities to track them down,” a regional intelligence
officer told Fox.
Israel has made similar charges before, with Israel’s
ambassador to the UN Danny Danon sending a letter to Security Council members
in 2016, warning Iran was using civilian airlines to supply the terrorists.
Fox said Qeshm Fars Air flights is loosely affiliated
with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.
Iran is Hezbollah’s chief patron, having helped set up the
group in the early 1980s. Since then, Iran has supplied Hezbollah with a range
of weapons and helped fund its social programs in southern Lebanon, and has
used the group to carry out terrorist attacks against American and Israeli
targets.
Hezbollah has grown into the Israeli military’s primary
threat in the region, with an arsenal of between 100,000 to 150,000 mortar
shells, rockets, and missiles. According to Israeli and Western intelligence
officials, Iran has been helping Hezbollah develop precision-guided missiles,
with which the group has the capability to stage a more successful attack on
Israel.
At Iran’s behest, Hezbollah has become deeply embroiled in
the Syrian civil war, fighting in a Shiite alliance alongside Iranian forces,
the Assad regime and Iraqi militias against primarily Sunni rebels.
Israel has reportedly carried out dozens of airstrikes in
Syria since the civil war began in a bid to stop the smuggling of advanced
weapons to Hezbollah, but has otherwise refrained from becoming involved in the
deadly conflict that has engulfed the country.
The head of the Israeli military’s Northern Command issued a clear threat to Hezbollah and
its Iranian patron on Monday, saying Israel’s next war with the terrorist group
would be its last.
“[Hezbollah] will feel the force of our arm. I hope there
won’t be another war, but if there is, it won’t be another Second Lebanon War,
but the final northern war,” said Maj. Gen. Yoel Strick at a conference
organized by the Hadashot TV news outlet.
The Northern Command chief also mocked Hezbollah’s Iranian
sponsors as having more bark than bite, noting that it took three months before
the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps retaliated for an Israeli strike against
it earlier this year.
“It has to be said straightforwardly — they have a lot less
than they planned. We all remember February 10. The Iranians planned to act
immediately, but in the end it took them three months,” Strick said.
Also Monday, Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “As for the threat from
Iran, we are not limiting ourselves to Syria.”
On February 10, an Israeli attack helicopter shot down an
Iranian drone that penetrated Israeli airspace and, simultaneously, Israeli
fighter jets bombed the air base from which the unmanned aerial vehicle was
being piloted. In the resulting clash with Syrian air defenses, an Israeli F-16
fighter jet was shot down.
Only three months later, in the pre-dawn hours of May 10,
some 20 rockets were fired at Israeli military positions along the Syrian
border in what Israel says was an attack by the IRGC’s Quds Force. In response,
the IDF conducted airstrikes against dozens of Iranian targets in the country.
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