| New York Times | - |
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Amid the chaos of Syria's civil war, Hezbollah has been moving long-range missiles to Lebanon from bases where it had stored them inside Syria, including long-range Scud D missiles that can strike deep into Israel, according to an ...
Hezbollah Moving Long-Range Missiles From Syria to Lebanon, an Analyst Says
By ANNE BARNARD and ERIC SCHMITT
Published: January 2, 2014
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The analyst, Ronen Bergman, who has close contacts with Israeli
intelligence officials, said Thursday that despite Israel’s undeclared
campaign of airstrikes in Syria to stop new deliveries, most of the
long-range surface-to-surface missiles given to Hezbollah by its allies
Iran and Syria have been disassembled and moved to Lebanon.
American intelligence analysts have also concluded that members of
Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militia, are smuggling components of
advanced Russian-made antiship missile systems piecemeal into Lebanon
from war-stricken Syria to avoid an Israeli air campaign, a United
States official said Thursday.
As many as 12 Russian-made antiship cruise missile systems may now be in
Hezbollah’s possession inside Syria, according to the American
official, who said that the organization had smuggled at least some
components from those systems into Lebanon within the past year, but
that it did not yet have all the parts needed there. The transfers were
first reported Thursday night by The Wall Street Journal.
Hezbollah, which is also Lebanon’s strongest political party, has a
network of bases that were built inside Syria, near the border with
Lebanon, to give the group strategic depth and to store the missiles,
Mr. Bergman said. But with a nearly three-year insurgency threatening
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, an ally of Hezbollah, keeping the
missiles in Syria is no longer as secure, Mr. Bergman said.
The missiles being moved, he said, include Scud D’s, shorter-range Scud
C’s, medium-range Fateh rockets that were made in Iran, Fajr rockets and
antiaircraft weapons that are fired from the shoulder.
Israel has struck inside Syria at least five times in 2013, seeking to destroy weapons systems bound for Hezbollah.
Israel carried out an air attack in Syria in July
that targeted advanced Yakhont antiship cruise missiles, which could
threaten Israeli naval forces. American analysts later determined that
the strikes did not destroy all the missiles systems.
In addition to targeting the Yakhont missiles, Israel carried out an
airstrike in late January 2013 aimed at another system provided by
Russia: a convoy of SA-17 surface-to-air missiles that Israeli officials
believed were destined for Hezbollah.
In May 2013, Israeli warplanes conducted two days of airstrikes that
targeted, among other things, a shipment of Fateh-110 missiles — mobile
surface-to-surface missiles that had been provided by Iran and flown to
Damascus, Syria, on transport planes that passed through Iraqi airspace.
Israel is concerned that Hezbollah not acquire what it considers game-changing strategic weapons during the Syria chaos.
Mr. Bergman said that on the first day of the war between Hezbollah and
Israel in 2006, the chief of the intelligence agency Mossad at the time,
Meir Dagan, advised the government not to start an attack on Hezbollah
in Lebanon without first hitting the militia’s bases in Syria, which
were built on the strategy that Israel would not dare to strike Syria.
The bases were believed to contain much of Hezbollah’s long-range
missile capability, Mr. Bergman said.
Mr. Bergman’s account corroborated one given by a Syrian military
officer in December 2012, at a time when rebels seemed to have momentum
in their advances on Damascus.
The officer, who spoke over Skype from Damascus, said he no longer
supported the government and wanted to defect but was waiting for the
right moment, in the meantime acting as an informant for the rebels. He
said government forces were dismantling strategic weapons and sending
them to two locations “for safekeeping”: the coastal province of Tartus
that the government holds and south Lebanon, where Hezbollah holds sway.
The weapons, he said, were being sent in tractor-trailers with special
coolers. The officer said his information came from another officer who
was loyal to the government and with whom he had close relations, and
from his own limited observations of the trucks being used to move the
weapons.
After several contacts, the officer could no longer be reached, and the information could not be verified.
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