Israel Intercepts Huge Arms Shipment from Iran Destined For Hizbullah
Email This Post
- 
Print This Post
-
Iran slapped Obama and his Rodney King-like Foreign policy across the face again as Israeli Naval forces boarded and seized an Iranian origin freighter filled with weapons and explosives.
One crate had “Parts of Bulldozer” written on its side. When it was opened though, the Navy did not see a track or a blade but a five-meter long 122 mm. Katyusha rocket.
The weaponry that was discovered aboard the Francop cargo vessel on its way from Iran to Syria and then to Hizbullah was of a wide variety and mix, including fragmentation grenades, artillery and tank shells, Kalashnikov ammunition and mortars.
The crates with the weapons came with writing in different languages, including Chinese, Russian, Spanish and of course English. An initial review of the cache appeared to indicate, senior IDF officers said, that the weaponry originated possibly in different countries before it was purchased by Iran.
By Wednesday afternoon, representatives from Military Intelligence’s Technological Division had assembled at the Ashdod Port to begin sifting through the weaponry together with soldiers from the Engineering Corps elite unit Yahalom - who are experts in handling explosives - to try and determine the exact origin and make.
The officers also raised the possibility that the weaponry was mostly manufactured in Iran but came in boxes with different languages since Iran also sells armaments to other countries.
The 122 mm. Katyusha rockets appeared to have been manufactured in Russia since they were covered in Russian writing. Some of the Kalashnikov bullets likely came from China. Others
The Katyusha was originally a World War II-era Soviet rocket mounted in Studebaker chassis and fired in volleys of 48 rockets with a range of 4 miles. The shriek of the rockets firing earned the weapon the name Stalin’s Pipeorgan. Today the name includes many variations with ranges exceeding 12 miles. They are manufacturer in numerous places worldwide.
The weaponry was hidden on the ship inside containers behind piles of sacks - each weighing 25 kilograms - filled with polyethylene and made by the Amir Kabir National Petrochemical Company based in Teheran. The sacks even had a phone number written on them.
IDF sources said that they were not ruling out the possibility that some of the mortar shells were manufactured in Israel and painted to make them look new. Israel’s Soltam Company sold thousands of mortar shells to Iran during the regime of the Shah in the 1970s and some of them are believed to have been already transferred to Hizbullah in the past.
The Spanish crates were carrying 106 mm. shells and each had the words “2 Disparos” written on them, meaning two shots, for the number of rockets inside.
The 107 mm. rockets were in crates claiming that they were manufactured in 2007. There were even instruction manuals inside in English explaining how to handle the rocket, carry it and even place it inside a launcher.
Other weapons on the ship included F1 fragmentation grenades, 20 per box. Several countries, including Iran, are known to manufacture the grenade.
Comment by Richard Cochrane on 5 November 2009:
A mammoth arms “train” has been running to Hizballah for months via Egypt. The identify the ship which recently offloaded tan arms shipment at the Egyptian port of Damietta, where it was picked up by the Francop as the Iranian Visea, it was reportedly on its way from the British port of Felixtowe to Hamburg, Germany. An international operation is afoot to apprehend the Iranian ship as of Wednesday, Nov. 4, when Israeli naval forces commandeered the Francop with hundreds of tons of Iranian arms bound for the Lebanese Hizballah it was stopped and boarded near Cyprus. The arms were unloaded at the Israeli naval base at Ashdod.t.
The Visea was formerly called Iran Zanian. She is owned by the IRISL corporation, Iran’s national shippers.
The estimated 500 of tons of weapons aboard were concealed inside sacks of polyethylene and loaded aboard the Visea either at Bandar Abbas or Bandar Imam Khomeini in Iran.
It sailed on Oct. 14, docking at Dubai’s Jabel Ali on Oct. 18, after which it wound its way through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, reaching Damietta port Monday, Oct. 26. Our sources stress that the containers and their hidden arms freight stood on Egyptian docks for seven days until Nov. 1, when the German ship Francop collected it for delivery at Beirut.
The Francop is known as a “feeder ship,” which circulates between regular ports of call beginning at Damietta, thence to Limassol in Cyprus and from there to Beirut, Lebanon, Port Latakia, Syria, and back. Neither the owners nor the crew knew about the concealed arms cargo, which was not recorded in the ship’s documents carried from the port of departure. These documents were left behind by the Iranian Visea.
Counter-terrorism sources report pressing questions arise about Egypt’s security procedures or lack thereof in the Suez Canal and its Mediterranean ports, when Iran has managed for months to run a sealift of arms from Iran to Syria and Hizballah, under the noses of Egyptian security and intelligence authorities.
These sources ask what would have happened if one of the Iranian arms ships plying their waters with hundreds of tons of missiles, rockets, shells and explosives aboard were to blow up in the middle of the Suez Canal. This vital waterway would have been blocked for many weeks, triggering a fresh international financial crisis.
As recently as October, when the German freighter Hansa India was discovered carrying Iranian arms and ammunition destined for Lebanon, the Berlin government ordered it to sail straight to Malta, after a tip-off from Israeli intelligence. There, the containers were unloaded and found to contain the Iranian arms.
To disguise its vast traffic of illicit arms to Lebanon, Iran has taken to using commercial “feeder” vessels which are frequently seen on regular tours around the Mediterranean ports and arouse little attention. By this route, Hizballah has received thousands of tons of arms and ammunition in the last few months.
Concerns have been increasing that the Iranian arms buildup signals an impending attack on Israel. Israel has reported increased fortifications and preparation for such an assault along its northern border.