The Israel Defense Forces on Thursday declassified various details about Hezbollah's ongoing effort to develop precision-guided missiles ahead of a potential future conflict with Israel.
Military Intelligence pegs Hezbollah's missile arsenal at about 200,000 projectiles of various ranges. Of them, the Shiite terrorist group is believed to possess several dozen precision missiles.
Iran, which sponsors Hezbollah as its regional proxy, has been assisting the terrorist group's efforts by smuggling the weapons, equipment, and technology necessary to facilitate its effort to boost its precision strike capabilities through Syria.
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But Israel has been consistently thwarting this effort, prompting Hezbollah to attempt to build domestic infrastructure to that end.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed Hezbollah's efforts, as well as Iran's considerable contribution, during his speech before the UN General Assembly in September 2018, sharing with world leaders intelligence indicating that the Shiite terrorist group was building weapon facilities in the heart of Beirut, effectively using the civilian population as a human shield.
Video: IDF/Twitter
According to details made available on Thursday, Hezbollah's efforts to develop precision-guided missiles date back to 2013, when the terrorist group stepped full force into the Syrian civil war to fight alongside Tehran's other regional ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Under the auspices of the brutal war, and in clear violation of a UN Security Council-imposed embargo, Iran began smuggling precision missiles into Syria, from where they were supposed to make their way to neighboring Lebanon and into Hezbollah's hands.
These convoys, however, were consistently and successfully destroyed by Israel, whose declared red-line policy is to prevent, by any means, the introduction of "game-changing weapons" into the region.
According to the IDF, in 2016 Iran and Hezbollah introduced a strategic shift and began pursuing local production of precision-guided missiles by upgrading existing Syrian projectiles, in an attempt to avoid having their convoys being targeted by Israel. This nefarious plan was foiled by a series of airstrikes that leveled the Syrian production sites.
Next, Iran decided to move the production to Lebanon, where Hezbollah wields considerable political and military power, but despite its efforts, production stalled. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, for his part, boasted that Israel wouldn't dare strike at the heart of the Lebanese capital, as the IDF "is deterred" and would not dare risk striking a densely populated urban area.
Over time, Israeli Military Intelligence has been able to determine that Hezbollah was using three routes to smuggle materials for the project: via the Syria-Lebanon border, by using Lebanon's naval ports, and by using civilian aircraft landing at Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut.
Still, until recently the terrorist group was unable to manufacture precision-guided missiles in Lebanon. This changed recently when it was able to develop a missile able to hit within a few yards of its intended target, thus placing both strategic facilities in Israel as well as civilian targets at a much greater risk.
Hezbollah's weapons upgrade effort has been orchestrated by the Quds Force, Iran's elite extraterritorial black-ops unit.
As part of the details revealed on Thursday, the IDF released information about the identity of several senior Iranian officers personally involved in the Shiite terrorist group's efforts to develop precision-guided projectiles: Brig. Gen. Muhammad Hussein-Zada Hejazi, Col. Majid Nuab, and Brig. Gen. Ali Asrar Nuruzi.
Hejazi is the Lebanon commander of Quds Force and is responsible for all of Iran's activities in the country, including the precision-guided missile program. He serves as Nasrallah's adviser on the weapons' upgrade program and answers directly to Quds Force Commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Nuab, an engineer who specializes in surface-to-surface missiles, is the technological manager of the project and oversees the production sites in Lebanon.
Nuruzi, a senior logistics officer, is in charge of transferring logistical components and equipment from Iran, through Syria, to the project sites in Lebanon.
On Hezbollah's side, Fuad Shukr, one of Nasrallah's top aides, oversees the project.
A member of the Jihad Council, the group's highest military body, Shukr is wanted by the US government for his role in planning and executing the 1983 bombing of the US Marines barracks in Beirut that killed 307 people.
The missile project itself is considered highly classified even within Hezbollah. Israel has shared this intelligence with the Lebanese government, but Beirut has largely defended the group, making it liable for it as far as Israel is concerned.
Now that the project has been exposed, Iran and Hezbollah have been accelerating their efforts, an Israeli military official said.
Another official noted that Israel wants Hezbollah to feel "hunted" and for the terrorist group to realize that it is vulnerable intelligence-wise, and as proof, released information on a production site, which soon resulted in their failure.
Still, Israel and Hezbollah are locked in a battle to remain one step ahead of each other, and where Hezbollah finds the door has been shut in its face, it tries to crawl in through the window.
The sites Netanyahu exposed in 2018 were meant to go online in August of this year but are nowhere near being up and running, all while Hezbollah's leadership is becoming increasingly vulnerable, an IDF official said.
