How do Iranian weapons enter the West Bank?

Lina Portman3 days ago

0 5 minutes read

Iran-backed Islamist militias are currently engaged in a two-front war against Israel. The main focus of the fighting, of course, remains the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

A “support front”, according to the preferred term, has been maintained by Lebanese Hezbollah since October 8 in the Israeli-Lebanese border area.

Iran's strategic goal is to encircle Israel with a crescent of active fronts, maintained by Iran and supported by Islamist militias. In this framework, the regime is seeking to find a way to add an eastern component to this crescent, passing through Jordan and the West Bank.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its client militias of course enjoy freedom of action in Iraq, where they are deeply embedded within the government and state.

But further west, two elements stand in the way of Iran's desire to launch an armed campaign against Israel in the West Bank and, from there, into central Israel. These are the US-backed Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the Israeli security presence in the West Bank.

IDF soldiers operate near Kalkilya in the West Bank on May 5, 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSONS UNIT)

Tehran is actively working to develop various “solutions” to this problem.

The Iranians have made considerable progress in this area. Most importantly, Tehran has managed to establish and maintain an arms route through which military equipment, shipped from Iran to Lebanon, is then transported across the Syrian-Lebanese border, via Jordan, to the West Bank.

Maintaining this route is of strategic importance to Iran. It is ultimately intended to flood the West Bank with weapons and, in doing so, turn the area into a third front in the long-running war against Israel.

How do Iranian weapons enter the West Bank?

Here are some details about one of the channels through which Iranian weapons flow to the West Bank. There may well be others.

The arms pipeline from Lebanon and Syria to the West Bank began in 2005. Syrian Brigadier General Mohammed Suleiman, assassinated by Israel in 2008, was responsible for facilitating the arrival of the weapons in Damascus and the Syrian coast, and then managing their delivery to Lebanon and Jordan.

The Lebanese Hezbollah was also involved in this process. At that time, two brothers, Sami and Alaa al-Bashashbeh, originally from Ramtha in Jordan, were responsible for managing the weapons from their entry into Jordan until their transfer to the West Bank.

The Bashashbehs cooperated with smuggling networks on the Syrian side and with the Lebanese Hezbollah. Their interest, like that of other smuggling families, was money, not ideological commitment. At the time, the transfer involved small arms – rifles, pistols and ammunition.

This network collapsed with the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the loss by the Syrian regime and its allies of a large part of the border to Sunni Arab insurgent groups. With the recapture by the Assad regime and its allies of the southern border area in 2018, the process resumed, on a larger scale, once again managed by Hezbollah, under Iranian supervision, in cooperation with elements of the Syrian regime and local smuggler families. These activities take place within the framework of Hezbollah's external security office, headed by senior member of the movement Wafiq Safa.

The arms trafficking now begins in Lebanon. The weapons are transported across the border to Hezbollah's external security headquarters in Qusayr, Syria.

The weapons are then transported to the Homs region, where they are stored on a farm owned by Hussein Rahma, which Hezbollah has transformed into a weapons storage site.

From there, the weapons are transported to a site in the Sayeda Zeinab area, south of Damascus. There, a senior Hezbollah official, Zain al-Abidin, is tasked with storing them and managing their transfer to southern Syria and Suwayda. Under his supervision, the weapons are transported to remote areas of Suwayda province, on the Syrian-Jordanian border. They are then transported to Jordan and then to the West Bank.

Although small arms continue to be transported on this route, after 2018 and the years leading up to the current war, the emphasis has shifted. Weapons currently in circulation include C4, TNT, mines, anti-tank mines, RPG launchers, and missiles of various types, including anti-tank and anti-personnel missiles.

On the Jordanian side, two families involved in the transfer of weapons inside Jordan and to the West Bank are the al-Saeed and al-Ramthan families. Muhammad al-Ramthan, the main member of this family involved in the transfer of weapons, is the brother of Mari al-Ramthan, who was killed in an airstrike by the Jordanian authorities in May 2023 due to his involvement in cross-border trafficking.

At the time, regional media outlets called Mari al-Ramthan the “Escobar” of southern Syria because of the Captagon smuggling along the routes he used. Few media outlets mentioned at the time that these same lines were being used to transport weapons. The 4th Armored Division, commanded by Maher al-Assad, is involved in this process.

Hezbollah smuggling

Hezbollah also relies on the cooperation of local elements and armed groups to facilitate smuggling. In this context, Jihad and Mashafi al-Saeed from the village of Sha'ab play a central role.

A medical center run by Jihad al-Saeed in the village of Sha'ab was used by Hezbollah to store weapons on the Syrian side of the border. As for the last stage of the network, namely the individuals on the Jordanian side responsible for bringing the weapons into the West Bank, several names can be identified.

The four individuals involved in arms trafficking in this area are Abu Amar al-Khalidi, Abu Khaled al-Sarhan, Saqr al-Fadous and Muhammad al-Duaij. All are known arms traffickers.

So far, this is the route that has been taken from Lebanon to the West Bank, via Syria and Jordan. What will happen when the weapons arrive in this area? A recent report by Ehud Ya'ari, a veteran Israeli Middle East analyst, suggests that Iran has abandoned its efforts to create a unified and hierarchical military command structure in the West Bank.

Such a structure would be too vulnerable to penetration by Israeli security services because of their tight grip on the region.

Instead, weapons and equipment are made available to any ad hoc armed group that forms locally in the West Bank and is prepared to carry out attacks against Israel.

Formations such as the now-defunct Lions' Den Battalion in Nablus and the Jenin Battalion in the same city are examples of such loosely structured Ktaeb, or battalions. Ya'ari calls this approach the Iranian strategy of “Kitaba.”

In his report, produced for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, he says there are currently 1,000 members in such loosely organized formations.

It also notes that IRGC Quds Force Units 840 and 3900 have established a joint “operations room” to manage this process with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

And what is the final destination of these weapons? On Monday, Sergeant Yehuda Geto, 22, of the IDF's Pardess Hanna and Commando Brigade, was killed by an improvised explosive device in the Nur-a-Shams refugee camp near Tulkarem in the West Bank.

A week earlier, Captain Alon Sacgiu of the Kfir Brigade had been killed in an improvised explosive device explosion in Jenin, in which 16 other IDF soldiers were injured. This was how things were supposed to end, from Iran's perspective.

The Iranian arms route from Lebanon, through Syria and Jordan, to the West Bank represents the main flagrant subversion of Jordanian sovereignty carried out so far by the Tehran regime.

It is also a clear, present and growing danger for Israel.

How do Iranian weapons enter the West Bank?

Hezbollah smuggling

Lina Portman

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