Iran’s Terror Airfield 12 Miles From Israel

Not content with having supplied Hezbollah over the years with 150,000 rockets with which to threaten Israel, nor with its financial aid, and more weapons, sent to the terror group Hamas in Gaza, nor with continuing to smuggle even more weapons, including drones, to Hezbollah via Syria, nor quite satisfied with its steady march toward manufacturing nuclear weapons with which to destroy the “Zionist entity,” Iran is now building a new airport in southern Syria, just 12 miles from the Israeli border, for its future use against Israel. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on this terror airfield and why Israel is so worried can be found here: “Israeli Defense Minister Reveals Iranian-Built Terror Airfield in South Lebanon,” by Andrew Bernard, Algemeiner, September 11, 2023:

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday accused Iran of building an airstrip near the Israel-Lebanon border for use in terrorist attacks against the Jewish state.

Speaking at a security conference at Reichman University in Israel, Gallant revealed what he described as images of the airfield showing the flags of Iran and its chief proxy force, the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. Gallant said the airstrip, which is about 12 miles north of the Israeli border near the Lebanese village of Birket Jabbour, was intended to be used for “terrorist objectives.”

Presumably, once the airfield is completed, the Iranians will be able, when they wish, to launch terror drones as well as be able to deliver weapons to terrorists inside Israel from the air.

“The land is Lebanese, the control is Iranian, and the target is Israel,” Gallant said. “If it comes to a conflict, we will not hesitate to activate the lethal force of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces]. Hezbollah and Lebanon will pay heavy and painful prices.”…

In practice, US and other diplomats have said the peacekeepers, formally known as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), have allowed Hezbollah to operate with impunity in south Lebanon.

“We know UNIFIL has been unable to access a range of troubling sites across the Blue Line, including illegal firing ranges, Green Without Borders sites, rocket launch sites, and tunnel sites,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, referring to the boundary separating Israel and Lebanon. “It is clear the main purpose of these sites is to facilitate Hezbollah’s operations in southern Lebanon along the Blue Line.”

UNIFIL has been unable to fulfill its mandate from the UN to keep a strip of southern Lebanon demilitarized. It has been unable to stop Hezbollah from building firing ranges, rocket launch sites, and terror tunnels which are dug by Hezbollah from southern Lebanon into the northern Galilee. There is no reason to think that UNIFIL will now be able to face down Hassan Nasrallah’s fighters guarding the airfield site; it’s up to Israel alone to protect itself from Iranian encroachments in Lebanon.

But why did Israel announce to the world that Iran was now building an airport in Lebanon just 12 miles from the border with Israel? Was that meant to be another warning to the world of Iran’s continued malevolence? But the Western world knows that already. Was it meant to warn Iran to stop building the airfield, sending a message that “we are watching you, nothing you do is hidden from us”? That wouldn’t stop the Iranian project, as it hasn’t them in the past; the Iranians continue relentlessly to enrich uranium to a level just below weapons-grade. I cannot help thinking that the IAF should have simply bombed the airfield, destroying it, but instead of mentioning Iran, it should only have said that “we destroyed a Lebanese site where activity of an unknown nature was going on; we believe a handful of Hezbollah fighters may have been killed.” In that way, Iran would not feel the need to retaliate against Israel; the fiction that it was a purely Hezbollah project could be maintained. The Iranians would have been angry, but also would realize that they are in no position right now to retaliate, lest they give the IAF all the excuse it needs to conduct a massive attack on Iran’s nuclear project. The Bidenites’ appeasement of Tehran — with $6 billion freed up for payment to Tehran, in exchange for five hostages, one of them an Iranian agent — has now made such an attack much more likely.

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