Arming Hezbollah

"What happens in Syria, happens in Lebanon [in terms of weapons availability], and vice versa. I’ll go a step further and say that everything that happens in Iran can end up in Syria, which can then end up in Lebanon. In the event of war with Hezbollah in Lebanon, I’m not sure Syria will remain on the sidelines. Hezbollah assists the Assad regime, and the help is mutual."
"The types of warheads and their ranges are many. We are in a completely different situation. The sector has changed. They can fire it at military headquarters in Tel Aviv."
"It [the Yakhont] is very fast. It has unusual capabilities. It can fly at a very high altitude, or a low one, depending on the variation. Such weapons pose a challenge to all Western navies in the area."
Israeli Navy source

Tunnel storage for Iranian Qiam ballistic missiles...Press TV-ir

Israel has its concerns, and they are myriad. Hamas threatening to pounce again, from next door in Gaza. And Hezbollah, despite being diverted temporarily next door in Syria, looming as yet another threat as both terrorist groups have been busy since their last military confrontations with Israel, amassing ever-more powerful weapons, secured, generally, from the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran has been quite busy itself on a large number of fronts. Sending out its tentacles near and abroad, from Yemen to South America and beyond.

Securing allies from the netherworld of outlier countries in support of Iranian connections. Building its network of support while undermining the sovereign territories of other countries by inveigling their Shiite sympathizers to follow in the Iranian Revolutionary footsteps in an eventual global undertaking to see Islamist Shiites, quite the equal of any Sunni Islamist extremist entities, take command of the world's fastest-expanding religion.

The upgraded technical qualities of Hezbollah's new acquisitions of surface-to-sea missiles is spoken of as "unprecedented", with dozens of such advanced weaponry in its arsenal, an estimated ten different types of such advanced missiles ready to be placed into action. Among them the Yakhont has a 300 kilometer range. That weaponry has been flowing into Syria and Lebanon, two politically unstable and critically volatile countries whose civil authority has collapsed into violent extremism.

The Israeli Navy, cognizant of all this movement finds itself spending a good deal of operational time and energy in dealing with the smuggling of those advanced weapons as Iran continues to develop its own weapons from templates originating from other states' technologies. It has developed its own smuggling industry as it studiously and covertly arms its allies and proxies in Syria and Lebanon whose semi-state groups are advancing and with their jihadist agendsas likelier as time goes on to attempt sea-based terrorist attacks.


Hezbollah's chief Hassan Nasrallah has plans for offensive moves with which to confidently confront Israel in their next confrontation, seeing his group as equal in terms of experience on the battlefield and with equipment equal to that which the Israels have themselves developed or obtained from other sources. Four new missile ships meant to secure four gas drilling platforms in Israel's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Mediterranean comprising an area 2-1/2 times larger than Israel, are slated for the Israeli Navy's possession.


And it is precisely those gas rigs, among other targets that appear increasingly attractive to Hezbollah. In anticipation of which the navy is busy setting up defense layers to surround those vulnerable targets, which include anti-missile defenses on ships and underwater defenses. Additional ships for this task represent an absolute necessity, according to the naval source. The Israeli navy's submarines, according to yet another naval source, carried out covert operations offshore in numbers, in 2014. "We conducted series of operations in various sectors. Some lasted weeks."

The military is hugely dependent on the capacity of submarines to help gather intelligence, including signals intelligence, while remaining submerged for long periods of time far from Israeli shores. The INS Tanin, the fourth German-Dolphin submarine to become part of the navy's fleet, representing the first vessel equipped with Air Independent Propulsion, received weapons and communications systems from domestic defence groups in Israel after their arrival in September from Germany.

Israel has never been advised to relax its guard. Where in years earlier it was the surrounding Arab countries of the Middle East that threatened its existence, it is now their proxies which do the same by stealth attack on an intermittent basis. While the Middle East is at war with itself as sectarian clashes wreak their wholesale bloodbaths and governments are dismantled and reassembled, the voids that occur before they are once again closed, welcome a flood of non-state extremist militias.

At such time as the countries of the Middle East reach an impasse or a solution however temporary, in their aggression against one another, their attention will revert to their commonly-perceived enemy, a Jewish State in the midst of a Muslim geography irrespective of the Judean heritage that far predated Islam. And then the threat will redouble with Israel on the alert against a bored group of states looking around to resume their antipathy for an intruder, plus their proxy jihadist militias.

In a dysfunctional geography where ancient grudges are never laid to rest, where tribal animosities and sectarian rivalries continually erupt in restive and violent clashes, the greater population is held in thrall to the ambitions of tyrants, oil sheikdoms and kingdoms whose tyrannical rule just manages to keep competing ethnic and clan and religious groups from one another's throats. When those populations become unruly and resistant to their oppressive rulers, mayhem erupts and Israel can relax.

Until the tide, as it inevitably does, turns back to swell the shore of discontent and Jew hatred turns the collective attention and their scimitars, allegorical and advanced into technological death machines to routing Jews and their state from land consecrated to Allah.