Hezbollah moved advanced antiship missile systems into Lebanon, U.S. officials say
Iran-backed organization smuggling powerful guided-missile systems piece by piece from Syria in order to evade secretive Israeli air campaign designed to stop them, U.S. officials say.
U.S. officials believe members of Hezbollah, the militant group backed by Iran, are smuggling advanced guided-missile systems into Lebanon from Syria piece by piece to evade a secretive Israeli air campaign designed to stop them.
Some components of a powerful antiship missile system have already been moved to Lebanon, according to previously undisclosed intelligence, while other systems that could target Israeli aircraft, ships and bases are being stored in expanded weapons depots under Hezbollah control in Syria, say current and former U.S. officials.
U.S. and Israeli officials say the airstrikes have stopped shipments of ground-to-air SA-17 antiaircraft weapons and ground-to-ground Fateh-110 rockets to Hezbollah locations in Lebanon. Some originated from Iran, others from Syria itself.
Nonetheless, as many as 12 antiship guided-missile systems may now be in Hezbollah’s possession inside Syria, according to U.S. officials briefed on the intelligence. Israel targeted those Russian-made systems in July and again in October with mixed results, according to U.S. damage assessments.
The U.S. believes Hezbollah has smuggled at least some components from those systems into Lebanon within the past year, including supersonic Yakhont rockets, but that it doesn’t yet have all the parts needed there. “To make it lethal, a system needs to be complete,” said a senior defense official.
On July 5, Israel targeted some of the Yakhonts at a Syrian base outside the coastal city of Latakia. Afterward, Israeli and U.S. spy satellites saw something unexpected. Ground forces destroyed military equipment at the bombing site to try to trick Israel into believing it had successfully taken out the launchers, officials briefed on the intelligence say.
A U.S. damage assessment concluded that Israel had taken out only part of its target, and that the Yakhont missiles and launchers appeared to have been moved out of the line of fire. On October 30, Israel targeted them again, U.S. officials said.
Israeli officials have told their U.S. counterparts that the strikes damaged some Yakhont components, while others are stuck in warehouses in Syria.
“We don’t think they have all the components in Lebanon to have a complete system,” said a senior U.S. defense official.
U.S. defense officials said they believe Hezbollah has tried to throw off Israel’s high-tech hunt by switching off and on communications and power networks along the border.
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