Hell From the Heavens
Longer-range Iranian arms are Israel's newest menace
At dawn on January 31 this year, Lebanese Army troops stopped a suspicious convoy of 12 trucks trying to cross the border from Syria. Inside, they found tons of unauthorized ammunition, rockets, and other weapons. The convoy's final destination: the arms caches of Hezbollah, the radical Islamic political movement whose militia controls wide swaths of southern and eastern Lebanon. A series of phone calls followed, reportedly reaching the Lebanese prime minister's office, until, finally, the convoy was allowed on its way.
The incident was but a glimpse of a vast supply train running from Iranian arms factories and Syrian warehouses to Hezbollah, whose burgeoning arsenal has prompted Israel's offensive into Lebanon this month. For a quarter century, Hezbollah's backers in Tehran have poured arms, money, and men into the group, helping transform it from a ragtag guerrilla force into one of the world's most formidable militias. Interviews with military and intelligence experts suggest that Hezbollah stands almost alone among groups on the U.S. terrorism list. "This is not merely a terrorist group," says Brig. Gen. Michael Herzog, who served as chief of strategic planning for the Israel Defense Forces. "This is a military."
Indeed, Hezbollah's armed force--with a hard core of several thousand men--is equipped with rocket launchers, artillery, and armored personnel carriers. Its soldiers have access to night vision goggles, aerial drones, and motorized gliders. "I have a lot of respect for Hezbollah's capabilities," says former CIA officer Robert Baer, who has followed the group since 1983. Baer spent a couple of weeks with Hezbollah last year, touring its facilities. "You've got some the most experienced operatives in the world there."
Born out of the chaos of Lebanon's civil war in 1982, Hezbollah--in English, the Party of God--is a direct spinoff from Ayatollah Khomeini's Iranian revolution and its vision of Islamic Shiite fundamentalism. Over its first 15 years, the group earned a long and bloody record for terrorist acts: suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, and bombings of the Israeli Embassy in Argentina and U.S. military housing at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia. But Hezbollah's top mission was always fighting the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Iran's ruling mullahs poured as much as $100 million a year into their Lebanese allies, say U.S. officials, and sent large shipments of arms and dozens of trainers from their elite Revolutionary Guards. The investment paid off: Hezbollah's military prowess was a key factor in Israel's 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon, ending an 18-year occupation. At the same time, Hezbollah grew into a potent political force, with elected officials in the Lebanese National Assembly and a wide network of social services, media, and businesses.
After leaving Lebanon, the Israelis watched with growing alarm as Hezbollah dug in along their northern border and amassed a growing arsenal. With Lebanon essentially controlled by Syrian troops until last year, arms shipments rolled in unencumbered from Iran and Syria. The bulk of weapons have come from Iran, say U.S. and Israeli officials. Iranian cargo jets typically fly the arms to Damascus, where they are unloaded and trucked to Hezbollah strongholds in the Bekáa Valley and farther south. Among the shipments: rocket-propelled grenade launchers, automatic weapons, mines, mortars, and, most troubling to the Israelis, huge stores of rockets. It is the unrestrained supply of those rockets--both their number and capability--that has changed the strategic equation and pushed the Israelis over the edge.
The IDF's Herzog calls the current situation "Israel's Cuban missile crisis." Once limited to short-range attacks along the border, Hezbollah now possesses midrange rockets capable of hitting much of Israel. With names like the Fajr and Zelzal, they can hold far bigger warheads and cause immense damage to civilian areas. These are crude rockets, defense specialists stress, not missiles, which have guidance systems. "They are woefully inaccurate," says Doug Richardson, editor of Jane's Missiles and Rockets.
Surprise attack. Israeli officials quietly acknowledge that their intelligence is limited. They were stunned when an Iranian-made, radar-guided cruise missile nearly sank one of their ships off the Lebanese coast July 14. Syrian-made rockets have also turned up in Hezbollah's arsenal, including midrange units that fell last week on Nazareth and Haifa, Israel's third-largest city. The rockets contain a nasty innovation--warheads filled with ball bearings that spread like shrapnel--prompting criticism from Human Rights Watch.
When the Israelis pulled out of southern Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah was thought to have an already impressive 6,000 rockets--most of them the unguided, short-range type fired out of tubes like artillery. In May, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasted of having more than 12,000, and Israeli analysts agree. "All of northern occupied Palestine is within range," Nasrallah said, referring to Israel. "Its ports, its bases, its factories, and everything located there."
Israeli officials hope to deal all of Hezbollah a crippling blow, but their top priority, they say, is taking out much of its rocket inventory. They claim to have destroyed as much as half the group's arsenal, but outside analysts remain cautious. As U.S. forces found while hunting Scud missiles in the first Gulf War, taking out missile units by air can be tough. Still, the IDF may yet send in major ground forces, and military experts stress that Lebanon is not Iraq. The short distances that make Israel so vulnerable also work against Hezbollah; much of the campaign against it is playing out in an area less than half the size of Connecticut.
With Jennifer L. Jack
This story appears in the July 31, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.