Iran denied allegations that the shipment was bound for Hezbollah. Soon afterward, Iran demoted Yahya Rahim Safavi, the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, officials say. In September, Safavi was replaced by his deputy, Mohammed Ali Jafari.
Iran allegedly shifted some Hezbollah-bound arms to aerial smuggling routes to Syria that use civilian and military aircraft, officials say. The Revolutionary Guard also resumed smuggling by rail, bolstering clandestine security teams that accompany shipments and paying bigger bribes to border inspectors and rail employees, officials say.
The Western security officials say Turkey tries to fight the weapons activity. Turkish officials declined to comment, and the latest annual report by Turkey's anti-smuggling directorate does not describe Iranian arms smuggling as a significant problem. When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Turkish journalists that Ankara could do more to crack down on arms traffic to Hezbollah, Tehran called the allegations "false and fictitious."
Israeli officials say Hezbollah's most potent weapons include about 500 Iranian Zilzal guided missiles, with ranges of 77, 136 and 186 miles. In addition, they say Hezbollah has 4,000 to 6,000 Iranian Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 rockets with ranges of 27 and 46 miles, respectively. And they say Syria has provided an estimated 20,000 rockets.
"The Syrians are a huge supplier of their own systems to them," the Israeli security official said. "They are not just passing on Iranian arms shipments anymore."
Patrick Haenni, a senior analyst in Lebanon for the International Crisis Group, said that although he does not have detailed information on Hezbollah's arsenal or its source, the statements by both Hezbollah and Israel "seem rather credible."
"All the signs on the ground show that Hezbollah is in a concerted phase of preparation, and concentrated on its military reactivation," he said. "The acquisition of missiles is part of their change in military strategy to position themselves as a dissuasion force rather than a classic guerrilla resistance."
In June, Lebanese authorities stopped a truck carrying Soviet-made Grad missiles bound for Hezbollah in the Bekaa Valley near Baalbek, U.N. and Lebanese officials said. Lebanese officials said the shipment was being moved within the country, but Western security officials say the weapons had come across the Syrian border. A few days later, the U.N. special envoy to Lebanon, Terje Roed-Larsen, told the Security Council about what he called "alarming and deeply disturbing" evidence of the flow of arms from Syria.
Late last year, Damascus struck a procurement deal with a Russian company to acquire SA-18 air-defense systems, Western security officials say. Unbeknown to the Russians, Syria allegedly plans to transfer the shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Hezbollah, officials say. The deal is done but the weapons have not yet been delivered to Syria, they say.
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rotella@latimes.com
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Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi in Beirut and Ashraf Khalil in Jerusalem and special correspondent Yesim Borg in Istanbul, Turkey, contributed to this report.
