يانيف كوبوفيتش/هآرتس: تقول إسرائيل بأن إيران تُسرِّع في تطوير برنامج حزب الله الصاروخي الدقيق بعد فشل استمر لسنوات/Yaniv Kubovich/Haaretz: Iran Accelerating Hezbollah’s Precision Missile Program After Years of Failure, Israel Says
Iran Accelerating Hezbollah’s Precision Missile Program After Years of Failure, Israel Says يانيف كوبوفيتش/هآرتس: تقول إسرائيل بأن إيران تسرِّع في تطوير برنامج حزب الله الصاروخي الدقيق بعد فشل استمر لسنوات Yaniv Kubovich/Haaretz/August 29/2019
Lebanese group and its Iranian backers have begun producing dozens of precision missiles in Lebanon, but have not found a way to mass produce them
Iran and Hezbollah have sped up their precision-guided missile project over the past year after six years of failure, Israel’s military said on Thursday amid tensions following a strike near Beirut that Lebanon attributed to Israel.
Hezbollah possesses dozens of precision missiles, the army said as it released a comprehensive overview of the missile project for the first time, but has until now failed in its attempts to mass produce them within Lebanon.
Hezbollah has kept the project compartmentalized, and the group has denied its existence in the face of foreign attempts to discover its details, including after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed the project’s existence in a September 2018 United Nations speech.
The military added that while the Lebanese government has ignored the project, Israel still holds it responsible.
Iran began attempting to deliver precision missiles – which can be accurate within a few meters of a target – to Hezbollah via Syria since 2013.
The Iranians assumed that the civil war raging in Syria would help disguise this activity, but Israel’s lack of intervention in that war made it possible to foil such efforts.
According to current assessments, Israel destroyed most of the weapons deliveries meant for Syria and Lebanon up until the end of 2015. Iran therefore decided in 2016 to instead transfer parts to Lebanon for building missiles there.
The parts were delivered through three routes: official crossings at the Syria-Lebanon border; on civilian flights to Beirut; and on ships arriving at Beirut’s port.
However, over the next two years Iran and Hezbollah decided that the project was not likely to become operational by the intended date – September 2018. According to the military, this led to them accelerating their plans.
On Wednesday, Haaretz reported that Sunday’s strike in Lebanon hit a central component of Hezbollah’s missile program. It damaged a planetary mixer — an industrial-sized mixer weighing about eight tons, needed to create propellants that can improve the engine performance of missiles and increase their accuracy. The machine was hit, as far as is known, shortly before Hezbollah planned to move it to a secured site.
Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who accused Israel of carrying out this strike and a second one – which killed two Lebanese Hezbollah fighters near Damascus a few hours earlier – threatened retaliation for both strikes. The Israeli army is bracing for a reprisal, possibly within the next few days.
Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Monday that Lebanon had a right to defend itself, what he said were Israeli drone strikes to a “declaration of war.”
