Iran Continues its Rocket Supply to Hezbollah

According to Israeli officials, Iran continues, as before, to supply Hezbollah with rockets, by copying the Russian and Chinese technology and incorporating it into the country's own weapons industry.

Israeli Reserve Brigadier General Yossi Kupperwasser and Yaakov Amidor, a retired major General who led the Israeli National Defense College, stated that most of the arsenal of the Shiite Muslim group consists mainly of Iranian-made Katyusha portable rockets, as well as Zelzal rockets, which means "earthquake'' in Arabic, that contain a 600-kilogram (1,322-pound) warhead and whose range is that of 120 miles, enough to reach Tel Aviv. In addition to those, there is the Noor missile, which is modeled after China's C802, having a device that "tricks" radars and thus provides a 98 percent hit rate.

Both of them asserted that Iran has been copying Russian and Chinese rockets for quite a long time now, yet the war in Lebanon proved to be the first opportunity for Iran to test its weaponry and prove that it can deliver quite a powerful counterattack, should it be assaulted upon.

"The success of Hezbollah reflects well on the regime in Iran. It adds a deterrent in terms of making the West think twice about putting damaging economic sanctions against Iran, and it will make people in the West think twice about the military option", David Schenker, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, stated. He also added that Hezbollah may possess even more dangerous weapons, as part of it arsenal:"It raises the specter that Iran has provided Hezbollah with other capabilities".

According to Andrew Brookes, an analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London and a former pilot of the Royal Air Force, other weapons that Iran ships to Hezbollah, although not very sophisticate, are quite effective in causing fear and terror: "Obsolete technology can be used as terror weapons".

The obvious route through which Iran supplies Hezbollah is through Syria, where all weapons are loaded in trucks and then sent into Lebanon, operations that are monitored by the Syrian authorities, Yftah Shapir, editor of the "Middle East Military Balance", an annual survey published by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies of Tel Aviv University, asserted.