Syria's New Regime Seizes Cargo of Iranian Weapons in Tartus

 

Under the administration of former dictator Bashar al-Assad, Syria's government gave Iran a logistics pipeline to supply Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah, the most powerful member of Iran's "Axis of Resistance" in the Mideast. Assad was ousted in December after 13 years of civil war, and Iranian forces fled the country; Syria's new regime, run by U.S.-designated terrorist group Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), has been expected to exercise some limited degree of new control over these smuggling routes. On Friday, HTS' security forces released images appearing to show the seizure of a cargo of smuggled Iranian weapons in the port city of Tartus - the first clear signal that HTS plans a public shutdown of an Iran-to-Hezbollah transfer route. 

The weapons in question were hidden beneath grain sacks in a truck, images provided by the HTS-governed Public Security Department show. The arms included folding-stock Kalashnikov rifles, belt-fed machine guns and three folded and crated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Open-source intelligence analysts have identified the drone model as the Iranian Shahed-101 loitering munition, a battery-electric, "silent" suicide drone known to be used by Hezbollah for attacks on Israel. 

 

 

The shipment route was not disclosed, but Iran is believed to have been smuggling weapons to Syria by sea at least as recently as last year, primarily through Latakia. An Israeli analyst told The Telegraph last March that five Iran-linked freighters rotated through port calls at Latakia to offload weapons cargoes, using false AIS destinations in Europe to mask their activity. 

The HTS security department did not detail the origins of the cargo it captured this week, but told state media outlet Sana that this particular consignment was intended for Hezbollah.