Newspaper reveals how Iran smuggles weapons into Palestine

QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Long before the ongoing Hamas-Israel war, Iran and its allies had accelerated efforts to smuggle weapons into a different part of the West Bank, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Using drones, secret airline flights and a land bridge that traverses hundreds of miles and at least four national borders, the smuggling operation is raising the specter of a new conflagration in the war between Israel and Palestinians, according to the Wall Street Journal.

It also poses a growing threat to Jordan that has been struggling to contain a growing flow of drugs and arms.

“Iran wants to turn Jordan into a transit area for weapons going into Israel,” the source said, citing Amer al-Sabaileh, founder of Security Languages, a counterterrorism think tank in Amman, as saying.

“The weapons flow has really increased, specifically over the past year. This is because Iran has been much more focused on the West Bank recently, and trying to arm some of the groups there,” said Michael Horowitz, Israel-based head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a risk consulting firm.

Jordan has porous borders to Syria and they are controlled by Iran’s ally Bashar al-Assad and to the West Bank. Jordan has long been vexed by the trafficking of weapons and drugs through its territory.

Jordan has complained to Syria and expressed its concerns to European allies, worried that weapons flows into the West Bank would strain its relations with Israel, according to the source, citing European and Middle Eastern officials.

Going across the Syrian border into Jordan, the arms are hidden in trucks going through official border crossings or carried across the vast desert expanses.

Additionally, in February, after a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, Esmail Qaani, Iranian brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and commander of its Quds Force, flew to Syria in an aircraft owned by Mahan, an airline that has been sanctioned by the US for flying militants and weapons from Iran to Syria.

After Qaani’s visit, the airline, under the guise of delivering aid, began transporting large quantities of weapons to Syria, according to a Central Intelligence Agency operative in the region, a Syrian government adviser and a European security official, citied by the Wall Street Journal.

For Jordan, stopping the flow of weapons is a difficult task due to its long northern border which is largely unguarded on the Syrian side, due to lack of cooperation from the Syrian government, and its frontier with Israel is not protected by significant fencing, making it a viable route for large-scale smuggling.

By Emma Jamal