Posted on 10/10/2023 8:31:26 PM PDT by bitt
Iran agents, Bedouin smugglers, shifting routes critical to dramatic arms upgrade
When Hamas opened its surprise attack on Israel just before dawn last Saturday, it unleashed sustained salvos of some 200 rockets and missiles each at Israeli cities and towns. By mid-morning, the militants had fired a total of some 2,500 projectiles that quickly overwhelmed Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.
At the same time, Hamas also launched scores of armed drones that dropped powerful explosives on Israeli tanks and troops guarding the Gaza border while hundreds of its fighters smashed through the fortified border on foot and others landed on Israeli beaches in small boats and dropped from the air in paragliders.
As Israelis ponder how the Mossad, Shin Bet and Aman military intelligence missed Hamas’ preparations for its wide-ranging assault, another question is: How did Israel fail to prevent Hamas’ from amassing an unprecedented stockpile of weapons—and some advanced ones at that?
Long Time Coming
It’s no secret how Hamas, under an Israeli military blockade since 2007, has generally managed to stock its arsenals with such lethal military hardware. According to numerous independent analysts and regional experts, Iran, wearing the mantle of anti-Israel leadership in the Muslim world, has been providing Hamas with millions of dollars in funding, weapons and missile training since they first established ties in the 1980s.
In 2014, Gen. Ahmad Hosseini, then the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps missile force, acknowledged the key role Tehran played in developing Hamas’ missile program. Years earlier, he recounted, Hamas engineers had been “armed and trained by Hezbollah (Iran’s proxy force in Lebanon). . . Some of them even came to Iran for training.” Hosseini added that the father of Iran’s own missile force, the late Gen. Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam, “armed them and guided them.”
Initially, Iran’s Quds Force, together with Hezbollah, instructed Hamas engineers in making rockets from common materials like pipes, fertilizer and sugar, said Ido Levy, an associate fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank, in a 2021 paper. This, he wrote, enabled Hamas to begin domestic production of its short-range Qassam rocket, which the militants fired at Israeli towns just north of the Gaza Strip.
Later, Iran began smuggling the components of its own home-manufactured Fajr 3 and Fajr 5 ballistic missiles, with ranges of 27 miles and 47 miles respectively, into Gaza by hiding them aboard ships with cargoes bound for European ports on the Mediterranean.
According to Fabian Hinz, an expert on Middle East missile proliferation with the London-based International Institute for Strategic studies, the ships disembarked from Iranian ports, sailed around the Arabian peninsula and made their way up the Red Sea to Port Sudan, where the missile components were offloaded to warehouses operated by Iran’s Quds Forces with the approval of Sudan’s Islamist President Omar al-Bashir,
While the Iranian cargo vessels continued through the Suez Canal to their destinations, Iranian agents in Sudan moved the missile components overland through Egypt to the Sinai Peninsula, where nomadic Bedouin tribesmen working with Hamas smuggled them into Gaza through tunnels dug under the Gaza-Egyptian border. Iranian-trained Hamas engineers then reassembled the parts into operable missiles, which were fired at the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod and Tel Aviv farther up the Mediterranean coast when hostilities with Israel erupted in 2012.
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How did Hamas terrs get ahold of M4 Colt carbines?
The Taliban had a "9/11 commemorative" sale. Buy one get one free!
$6 billion buys a lot of rockets.
We all know. Iran shares a long border with Afghanistan.
I wonder if the parts for a nuclear weapon have been smuggled into Tel Aviv courtesy of Pakistan (the country that hid Osama bin Laden with an estimated 170 nuclear warheads).
The exact same way NATO used grain pickup ships to deliver weapons to Ukraine;)
Are ya wondering how Ukrainian aid ended up in Gaza.... Me thinks Biden is double dealing weapons.
Hamas has Ukrainian antitank weapons, possibly as cover for covert US delivery to Hamas.
How did Hamas get advanced rockets?
Ask every single member of the 535 members in the US Congress to answer that question; ask them about the billions of dollars of weapons left in Afganistan while they did nothing.
While you’re asking questions, ask each member of the US Congress why they have NOT honored their Oaths Of Office to protect and defend this nation from our enemies foreign and domestic! Remind them of the thousands of terrorists they’ve allowed to cross our open borders and where are those terrorists right now?
in pieces
I haven’t seen any pics of M4s. They killed quite a few Israeli soldiers at the outset, plus the US has been fighting in the ME for over twenty years, so huge quantities of US arms are floating around, plus Joe’s gift to the Taliban and arms captured from Ukraine by Russia traded to Iran.
Or Russian RPG7s. Hezbollah is using Kornets. You can thank Vlad’s trades with Iran for those.
Hamas Acknowledges Ukraine for Weapon Supply
Biden raided the US Treasury, bought the rockets, then Hunter sold them to Hamas paying Joe a 10% commission.
Brought them from Afghanistan...
They were just lying around all over the place...
Parts made in Iran, transport and storage paid for by Obama and Biden.Assembled in Gaza in underground factories, just like Iran has done in Syria.
And the concrete bunker system whichi uinderlies Gaza? The concrete and steel was paid for by Obama.
>>The Fajr-5 has a range of 75 km while carrying a 90 kg high explosive (HE) warhead. The rocket has a length of 6.485 m, a body diameter of 333 mm, and a launch weight of 915 kg. The mobile Fajr-5 launchers used in 2006 carried up to four rockets each.26
https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/hezbollahs-rocket-arsenal/
100% correct
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