Russian arms for Hizballah cross Israel’s red line
Russian Forpost UAV asrd on Israel's Searcher drone
President Vladimir Putin turns aside all Israel’s complaints about Russian arms supplies to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hizballah, whenever he talks to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu – roughly every week-to-ten days. The issue is also raised without results by Israeli officials on trips to Moscow, including the visit by Yossi Cohen, Director of the Mossad, to the Russian capital on July 1.
Nonetheless, Netanyahu persisted in complaining again about the Russian arms reaching the Lebanese terrorist group in his latest phone conversation with Putin on Saturday, July 23. He made the call, debkafile military sources say, primarily to raise another topic at issue, the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) flights from Syria into Israeli airspace on July 17.
After their conversation, the Kremlin issued a bland statement saying that the two leaders discussed issues related to the war on terrorism, and that both agreed to continue the ties between the countries at “various levels.”
The Russian arms supplies to Hizballah elude Israel’s efforts to interrupt them by two covert tactics:
1. Russian weapons consignments to the Syrian army are in excess of the recipient’s requirements; the surplus is secretly diverted to the Hizballah. Israeli air strikes only smash the Iranian and Syrian weapons convoys known to be heading out of Syria to Lebanon on the strength of data provided by Israeli military intelligence (Aman). But the traffic missed by Aman goes through to its destination.
By this tactic, our military sources report, Hizballah has succeeded in basing most of its fighting units, not only in Syria, but also in Lebanon, on Russian weaponry – last year, at a battalion level; by June 2016, including company level. Their hardware is not limited to personal side-arms from Russia, but also anti-aircraft and anti-tanks missiles.
Where do they come from?
2. The Russian military industry is the main supplier of raw materials for Syria’s arms manufacture, including missiles. Without this assistance, the Assad regime would not have been able to manufacture the Scud C mid-range ground-to-ground missiles or the Fateh-110 missiles.
Some of these made-in-Syria missiles are quietly consigned to the Hizballah.
Our sources have found that Putin habitually acts surprised and feigns ignorance whenever Netanyahu raises the issue of the Russian weapon supply to the Hizballah. He then promises to look into Israel’s complaint and get back to him with an answer. Weeks go by and the Russian president informs the prime minister that the thorough examination he ordered found no evidence of any Russian military or civilian body supplying Hizballah with weapons.
Netanyahu shows his disbelief and continues to raise the issue each time he speaks with Putin.Meanwhile, the Russian arms supply to Hizballah goes on with Israel constrained from interfering.
debkafile: These occurrences demonstrate that the military and intelligence relations between Israel and Russia are in fact a far cry from the entente cordiale presumed in Israel and Western capitals. Indeed, working relations are handicapped by the effect of such incidents to erode even the limited understanding the two leaders reached to coordinate military intelligence and air force operations in the Syrian arena.