Thursday - November 05, 2009

Smoke and Mirrors and Bombs

The pointy end of the stick, where diplomacy fails and government statements try to hide the truth.

Israel’s navy has seized a container ship originating in Iran and loaded with arms, including rockets, destined for Syria and Lebanon’s Shia group Hizbollah, the Israeli military said on Wednesday.

The pre-dawn interception was used by Israeli government officials to underscore their argument that their arch-foe was supplying weapons to militant groups targeting the Jewish state. Israel has warned that Hizbollah has been rearming since the group launched more than 4,000 rockets into its territory during a 34-day war in mid-2006.

Israel’s military said a navy force boarded the ship, which was flying the flag of Antigua, about 100 miles west of Israel’s coast. Following an inspection that showed the ship carried a variety of weapons hidden behind what appeared to be civilian cargo, it was towed to an Israeli port.

Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, said during a visit to a military base: “The army successfully captured a ship that seems to have come from Iran and was heading to Syria and to Hizbollah. . .  Iran and Syria are arming terror organisations, especially Hizbollah and Hamas, and are clearly acting to undermine peace in the Middle East.”

JERUSALEM – Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons from Iran bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah guerrillas – the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.

The Israeli military said an Iranian document was found on board, showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran, although the paper was not shown to reporters.

“We found dozens of containers, with hundreds of tonnes of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran,” deputy naval commander Rani Ben Yehuda told reporters.

At Ashdod port, soldiers pulled hundreds of olive-green ammunition crates from the shipping containers, many of them surrounded by sacks of cement meant to disguise the contents. They were then divided into huge stacks of rockets of various sizes, mortar shells, hand grenades and ammunition for AK-47 rifles. Many of the weapons crates had inscriptions in Spanish, Chinese and English.
No anti-aircraft or anti-tank missiles have been found on the ship, Ben-Yehuda said, but he added that soldiers were still unpacking containers.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that the ship set out from Iran and later docked in Yemen and Sudan before passing through the Suez Canal en route to either Syria or Lebanon.

Stopped in Sudan and Yemen first? Supplying the rebels in both places? Sounds like a floating arms bazaar! Oh, if only International Law could close that bothersome Arms Ship Loophole!

Was Not!!

In Tehran, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem dismissed the Israeli allegations that the ship carried arms. His remarks were carried by Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV station and other Lebanese local stations.

“Unfortunately, some official pirates in the seas, sometimes in the name of the navy, sometimes in the name of inspection, obstruct trade movement between Syria and Iran,” al-Moallem said at a joint news conference with his Iranian counterpart.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that the cargo ship seized by Israel was not carrying weapons, the official IRNA news agency reported. Mottaki made the remarks in a joint press conference with his visiting Syrian counterpart Walid Muallem on Wednesday.

Asked about the reports over the seizure of an Iranian cargo ship on the coasts of Israel, Muallem said, “Such a thing is not correct and the ship was moving from Syria to Iran and was not carrying any weapons nor the equipment to construct weapons.”

“Since the Israeli leadership and society are not ready for peace, they are using any pretext to shun peace obligations, and one is the issue of the Iranian shipment,” said Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the West Bank-based Palestinian government.

Hezbollah on Thursday denied the weapons were for them. There was no comment from Lebanese officials.

“Hezbollah categorically denies it has any connection with the weapons which the Zionist enemy claims it seized aboard the Francop ship,” Hezbollah said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press in Beirut.

The Bigger Picture

The arms shipment underscored the dangerous tensions between Israel and the Islamic Republic. Israel considers Iran a strategic threat because of its nuclear program and long-range missile development, and says Tehran is lying when it denies it is building atomic arms.

Iran has never acknowledged giving weapons to Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war with Israel in 2006. Proof of large-scale Iranian weapons shipments to its proxy forces on Israel’s borders could reinforce Israeli demands for tough action — possibly even a pre-emptive strike — against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Israeli defense officials said the weapons haul consisted of arms already in Hezbollah’s possession [ huh? WTF? translation error? ], and would have given the Lebanese guerrilla group the ability to fight a full month longer in the event of a clash with Israel on the scale of the 2006 war.

The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the military has yet to formally comment on the potential value of the shipment’s contents to militants.

The presence of Iranian proxies in the Mideast, combined with worries over Tehran’s nuclear program and arsenal of long-range missiles, have made Iran the Jewish state’s most formidable foe.

Neutralizing Iran’s bomb-making ability remains Netanyahu’s top priority — and Israel has not ruled out a military strike against Tehran’s nuclear facilities.

Posted by Drew458     on 11/05/2009 at 11:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Israel • Middle-East • Terrorists •  
• Comments (10) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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