September 14, 2022 | Flash Brief

Israel Reveals Iranian Missile Production Sites in Syria

September 14, 2022 | Flash Brief

Israel Reveals Iranian Missile Production Sites in Syria

Latest Developments

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz displayed a map on Sept. 12 that shows the Syrian location of 10 “production facilities for mid- and long-range, precise missiles and weapons” that Iran has “provided to Hezbollah and Iranian proxies.” He said Tehran is also “working to build missile and weapon industries in Lebanon and Yemen” as part of its campaign to destabilize the region. If the United States lifts sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal, Gantz warned, this would “double or even triple their terror budget.”

Expert Analysis

“Tehran has taken advantage of economic and political instability in Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza to proliferate advanced weapons to its proxies and unify the so-called Axis of Resistance as an effective tool to attack Israel.”
– Joe Truzman, Research Analyst at FDD’s Long War Journal

“Syria’s Assad regime relies on Tehran no less than Moscow for its survival. Tehran does not flinch at the atrocities Assad has committed. In return, Assad has given the Iranians free rein to turn his country into a conduit for arming Hezbollah and a launchpad for aggression against Israel.”
– David Adesnik, FDD Senior Fellow and Director of Research

Syria’s Chemical Weapons and Ballistic Missile Infrastructure

Gantz said the 10 sites on his map are part of a network that belongs to the Scientific Studies and Research Centre (SSRC), which the U.S. Treasury Department describes as a “Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing non-conventional weapons and ballistic missiles.” The Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations have all sanctioned the SSRC and/or its affiliates for supporting Syria’s chemical weapons program and related activities.

Iran’s ‘Precision Project’ for Targeting Israel

Hezbollah has assembled an arsenal of more than 100,000 rockets and missiles in Lebanon, yet its inventory of precision-guided munitions (PGMs) numbers only in the hundreds. These include the Iranian Fateh-110 road-mobile ballistic missile and its Syrian cousin, the M-600.

PGMs, which can correct their course mid-flight, pose a grave threat to Israel, a small country with little redundancy of critical infrastructure. Sufficient PGMs could rapidly disable Israel’s energy and water systems as well as its air and seaports. Accordingly, Iran has prioritized efforts to equip Hezbollah with PGMs.

Israeli Airstrikes in Syria

Regarding Israel, Hezbollah explained in its original manifesto, “Our struggle will only end when this entity is obliterated.” Thus, when Iran accelerated its “precision project” during the Syrian civil war, Israel adopted a “policy to prevent the transfer of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah in Syrian territory,” said then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2018.

With increasing frequency, Israel has targeted shipments of Iranian weapons as they traverse Syrian territory, along with facilities that support Tehran’s efforts. In 2019, then-Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot said, “We struck thousands of targets,” adding that the Israeli Air Force dropped 2,000 bombs in Syria in 2018 alone.

Related FDD Analysis

Issues:

Hezbollah Iran Global Threat Network Iran-backed Terrorism Israel Lebanon Syria