Israeli Navy Seizes Weapons Believed to Be for Hezbollah

ASHDOD, Israel -- Israeli officials said naval commandos seized a cargo ship 100 miles off Israel's Mediterranean coast carrying nearly 600 tons of weapons from Iran bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Commandos boarded the Antiguan-flagged ship, the Francop, Tuesday evening with the permission of the ship's crew as part of routine antismuggling operations, Israeli Navy Brig. Gen. Rani Ben Yehuda said.

"In a random check of the containers we found a variety of weaponry camouflaged as civilian goods," Gen. Ben Yehuda said. "Clearly these weapons are for terror purposes. There is no doubt they came from Iran, and were headed through Syria to Hezbollah."

Hezbollah officials in Beirut declined to comment on the Israeli allegations. A spokesman for the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York also had no comment.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, in televised comments made during a visit to Tehran, called the Israeli commandos "pirates" and denied the ship was carrying weapons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the raid a "preventive operation against a ship that was providing weapons that would be targeting Israeli cities."

The raid came a day after Israel's military intelligence chief warned that, despite months of relative calm on Israel's borders, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas militants in Gaza are stockpiling Iranian and Syrian arms.
Israel fought an inconclusive 34-day war against Hezbollah in 2006 and defense officials say a second, larger confrontation with the Shiite militants, who have backing from Iran and Syria, is inevitable.

Lebanon's Hezbollah-led opposition was narrowly defeated in the last elections, but the Shiite party still retains more influence in Lebanese politics than any other single party.

Among the seized weapons on display by the Israeli military were Katyusha rockets, mortars, hand grenades, and crates of ammunition for Kalashnikov rifles.

The seized cargo represented "a drop in the sea" compared with the total quantities of Iranian arms reaching Hezbollah, Gen. Ben Yehuda said.

Giora Eiland, the head of the Israeli National Security Council until 2006, said the operation was "tactically insignificant and does not create any strategic change in Hezbollah's military capabilities."

Mr. Eiland added that "the most significant implication of this raid is if Israel manages to use this event to change the perception in the international community and within Lebanon itself of what is actually happening in Lebanon."
Israeli military officials declined to say whether they had any specific intelligence about the ship ahead of time or if they had been tracking it. Military experts in Israel expressed doubt that the military would have raided the ship without specific intelligence.

Gen. Ben Yehuda said the ship carried about 300 containers, 36 of which contained weapons that documents on board the ship showed as having originated in the south Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and were bound for Syria. He said the type of weapons found left little doubt that they were bound for Hezbollah, since conventional armies have little use for such weapons.

Israeli officials and an employee for United Feeder Services, the Cyprus-based company that was operating the ship, said the ship's crew had no idea they were transporting weapons.

The Israeli navy towed the ship to the Port of Ashdod, in southern Israel. Israeli officials said they will release the ship after sorting through its cargo.

Gen. Ben Yehuda said the ship had picked up the weapons in the Egyptian port city of Damietta and was due to make stops in Cyprus, Beirut and Syria.

He said an Iranian ship had brought the cargo from Iran to Damietta, a common hub port where large ships transfer their cargo to smaller ships for distribution throughout the Mediterranean Sea.

Egypt is believed to be one transit link in a common Iranian weapons smuggling route. In March, U.S. officials said Israeli aircraft attacked an alleged weapons convoy in Sudan that officials said was headed to Egypt on its way to Palestinian militants in Gaza.

Israeli military officials said the ship was carrying nearly 3,000 Katyusha rockets, nearly equal to the estimated 4,000 rockets Hezbollah fired at Israel throughout the 34-day Lebanon War in 2006.

Officials showed videos and displayed containers showing the weapons were concealed among sacks of Iranian-made polyethylene plastics in cargo containers labeled "IRISL: Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines."

The size of the seizure surpassed that of a similar incident in 2002, when Israel seized a ship carrying 50 tons of Iranian weapons bound for Palestinian militants in Gaza.

In recent months, a series of operations targeting Hezbollah have raised suspicions that Israel has stepped up its special-operations campaign against the group, though Israel hasn't publicly admitted responsibility for any of the incidents.

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