Naval threat from the north: a glimpse into Hezbollah's naval commando system

In the last decade, Nasrallah has invested a lot of resources in building a dangerous naval unit for the terrorist organization.

This, along with the growing tension in the background of the gas pumping in the "Shark" rig.

According to estimates, the unit has put on alert.

"They are at the forefront of Hezbollah - in the Middle East they always go from zero to a hundred"

Amir Bohbot

01/07/2022

Friday, 01 July 2022, 17:00 Updated: 17:02

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A few years ago, information chips arrived at the Israeli intelligence community about the possibility that Syrian President Bashar Assad decided to hand over the "Yakhont" missile to Hezbollah, a missile on a plane that flew at 2.6 Mach (750 meters per second) and was defined as a threat to Western navies.

Doubt to preserve his arsenal of high-quality weapons from attacks by rebels and global jihadist organizations that attacked Syrian army bases, doubt a desire to pass on to his ally an egalitarian weapon to strengthen Hezbollah's deterrence against Israel.

All the gathering agents led by the Armed Forces and the Mossad came together to expose the dangerous move. The full intelligence picture was built step by step. From that moment on, the political echelon began to exert pressure on Russia and other diplomatic elements in the West.

"It just seems like Russia is selling its high-quality weapons to unstable countries and disclaiming responsibility. In this case? She really cared who was holding the weapon and what he was going to do with it," said a former security official familiar with the affair.

The source added modestly: "I do not know if they have tried to smuggle the missiles again in recent years, but one thing was clear then. Nasrallah decided to invest significantly in the naval force of the organization for a future war against Israel and gives it the most attention."

The "Yakhont" missile (Photo: Official website, from Wikipedia)

Navy officials say there have been two turning points for Hezbollah in the past two decades, following which Nasrallah accelerated naval force building processes.

The first, and most prominent, is the launch of a missile during the Second Lebanon War at the Israeli missile ship Hanit, which until then was considered the IDF's flagship, killing four soldiers.

The second incident took place in Operation Eitan, in the summer of 2014, during which five Hamas "Nuhaba" divers raided Zikim Beach and fought a shootout with IDF fighters. Senior Hezbollah figures the insight required to invest greater resources in the organization's naval force.

"Hezbollah has developed three capabilities in the naval arena: hitting a rig defined as a very large static target, hitting a vessel, and raiding Israeli shores," Tal Barry, head of the research department at Israel's Alma Center for Security Challenges in the northern arena, said this week.

"Hezbollah's naval unit numbers hundreds of soldiers from an army of tens of thousands on a regular basis. Inside the naval unit there is a very elite force, the spearhead, the Radwan force, who are defined as naval commando fighters. It is estimated that there are dozens of fighters."

According to Barry, "The goal of the naval unit is to enable Hezbollah to operate with the help of commandos and dedicated weapons. The divers are called 'human frogs.' ".

Hezbollah Commando (Photo: Official website, Alma - Research Center for the Study of Security Challenges in the Northern Arena)

Barry pointed to another alarming trend that has developed over the past decade: about 45% of the Lebanese army's manpower is Shiite and forms the basis for cooperation between Hezbollah and the Lebanese army.

Therefore, senior officials in the Northern Command estimate that in the next wide-ranging confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese army will not stand aside or at least not the Shiite fighters in its service and they will join the war.

Another worrying process is the American and European support for the Lebanese army in weapons, ammunition, vessels, knowledge and training.

"It is clear that there is a leakage of knowledge and equipment from the Lebanese army to Hezbollah based on the Shiite fraternity," he explained.

Navy officials said this week that Hezbollah is working around the clock to gather intelligence on the naval border and IDF forces including on the gas rig at the Shark site.

In 2016, an unusual incident was recorded in the Navy's Operations Logs.

After an in-depth investigation and examination of data and intelligence, it became clear that divers from Hezbollah's elite force, reached at least one case, to the maritime border area and crossed the Israeli side to examine the Israeli technology underwater.

In another case that year, a buoy placed by the navy on the border fell into their hands and was swept to the Lebanese side.

The then head of the Armed Forces and now Deputy Chief of Staff Major General Herzli Halevi himself dealt with the question of whether Hezbollah's bold friction along the border line was done as part of a regular intelligence gathering or as a pre-operation intelligence.

Aerial photograph of the naval unit's warehouses (Photo: Official website, Alma - Research Center for the Study of Security Challenges in the Northern Arena)

According to a former security source who is in the Hezbollah force building, the separation between the commando forces, the various vessel operators, and the operators of the naval unit's alert alert and patrol system is clear.

"In the last decade, Hezbollah has accelerated quite a few processes in the naval system. For them, killing soldiers on a bee ship has more resonance and intimidation than killing soldiers with a rocket on land. Hezbollah has dozens of speedboats, they also use fishing boats as camouflage to gather intelligence. "Israeli 'Dwarf Submarines' to transfer a single number of commando fighters and small transport vehicles, in order to carry out a raid on Haifa or the Betzet area."

"Unlike Hamas, they can import almost anything they want to implement operational plans such as harming vessels in Haifa Bay, dredging the area and scattering cluster munitions to impose a naval blockade on Israel," the source continued.

"An attempt to take over a bee and hit a shark rig are also options that are within the equation. It is important to understand that Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, is in no hurry to commit suicide. Nasrallah is very sensitive to this issue (special unit fighters are members of the Shiite leadership in Lebanon AB)."

In recent years, the Israeli Air Force has, according to many foreign publications, thwarted weapons smuggling for Hezbollah from Syria to Lebanon, possibly also for the "naval unit."

However, it can be estimated that in quite a few cases and for various reasons, the Shiite organization managed to outwit the Israeli intelligence community, and to introduce advanced technology into Beirut.

Hezbollah commando fighters (Photo: Official website, Alma - Research Center for the Study of Security Challenges in the Northern Arena)

Barry, head of the research department at the Alma Center, which monitors Hezbollah's power building, claims that since the missile was launched at the Hanit Brigade in the summer of 2006, the Shiite organization has upgraded its coastal missile arsenal to dozens of items at Hezbollah bases along the coast. "We estimate that south of the city of Tzur, there is a point of launching Hezbollah beach missiles smuggled from Iran," Barry said. "They have a variety of capabilities that allow them to try and reach the shores of Israel.

We most likely estimate that they have small Iranian-made submarines for transporting fighters.

They are also trained using advanced diving equipment for long distances off the coast of Lebanon at various depths.

They know how to carry out raids and seize naval targets, use explosive devices and lay mines.

In recent years, they are on the radar because of the size, they are expanding. "

According to estimates, Hezbollah will not rush to send fighters into battles with the IDF, Barry said Hezbollah has remotely controlled underwater robots that could threaten vessels and a gas rig. What Hezbollah has. "

What recently raised tensions with Hezbollah was the decision to expose in the latest war exercise the ability of the IDF to land hundreds of soldiers on Lebanese shores.

Opinions on the move within the IDF are divided - some officers have argued that the number of places that can be landed from the sea along the Lebanese coastline is limited and known in advance, so Hezbollah can prepare for it. In protecting the beaches, in contrast to the past and despite the organization's economic hardship, however, this is not the only reason for raising tensions between Hezbollah and the IDF.

Potential site for launching telephones towards Israel (Photo: Official site, Alma - Research Center for the Study of Security Challenges in the Northern Arena)

The entry of the rig to pump gas from the "Shark" site in June, 80 miles off the coast of Israel, drew a trail of reactions at the top of Lebanon who sharply criticized Israel's unilateral action while US-mediated negotiations.

Defense Minister Bnei Gantz and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid issued a joint statement, according to which there is no intention to pump gas from the disputed party until the end of the talks.

The ministers' announcement did not reassure the Hezbollah leader, who likened the struggle over the establishment of the naval border and the pumping of gas to the "liberation" of the security zone in southern Lebanon and the withdrawal of Israel in 2000.

"In light of the situation created at the border and Nasrallah's remarks we estimate that the naval unit has been put on standby," Barry said.

"He explicitly said that it was not acceptable for Israel to pump gas as long as the negotiations were not closed. It was a very belligerent speech. Now the question is how Nasrallah came down from the tree if he did not get what he wanted? There are very strong brakes that will prevent Nasrallah from deteriorating, And what interests Hezbollah is Hezbollah. We need to connect the statements of Nasrallah who wants to strengthen his position in the eyes of the Shiites, in the eyes of his 'base', after the elections in Lebanon. Nor would I ignore Iranian interests ".

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