Section:GDN 1N PaGe:35 Edition Date:190829 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 28/8/2019 19:08 cYanmaGentaYellowb
Thursday 29 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •World^35
Martin Chulov Beirut
Oliver Holmes Jerusalem
Mohammed Rasool Qayara, IraqA
spate of drone attacks
in Syria, Iraq, Saudi
Arabia, Yemen and
now Lebanon has
raised the spectre of
a new era of confl ict
in the region because the stealth-
like weapons are able to penetrate
distant battlefi elds and hit closely
guarded targets.
Drone warfare has become an
instrumental factor in the escalating
confl ict between Israel and Iran,
now being fought over both sides
of the Israeli border and in skies
across the region. Small, cheap to
produce and capable of evading
radar systems, drones have been a
centrepiece of the Israeli military’s
arsenal for many years – primarily in
its operations over Gaza.
Iran has also warmed to their use,
deploying the unmanned, remotely
piloted machines in clashes with
Israel that it has long used proxies
to conduct but is now increasingly
carrying out itself. All sides see
the technology as having surgical,
deniable qualities.Israeli offi cials have told
European diplomats that two drones
that crashed in Beirut on Sunday
were sent from Israel to disrupt
eff orts by Hezbollah to fi t advanced
guidance systems to rudimentary
rockets, sources have revealed.
The drones fell to the ground in
the Lebanese capital’s southern
suburbs, a stronghold of the militant
group, which retrieved the damaged
machines and claimed that both
were fi tted with around 5kg (11lb) of
plastic explosives.
Two western diplomats told the
Guardian that the unusual operation
may have been an assassination
attempt, or a n attempt to destroy a
site seen as important to Hezbollah’s
ability to fi t guidance systems to
missiles that until now have been
fi red blindly into Israel.
Last night the Lebanese army
opened fi re at two Israeli drones,
according to Lebanese security
sources and local media.
The development comes as Shia
militant leaders in Iraq claimed
that Israel used drones launched
from Azerbaijan to attack targets in
the country in areas that regional
offi cials say have become transit
hubs for weapons being sent to new
Iranian positions near Israel.Muhandis is also the leader of the
Shia militia Kata’ib Hezbollah, one
of Iran’s most infl uential proxies
in Iraq , which has taken a lead
role in safeguarding a corridor of
Iranian infl uence from Tehran to
the Mediterranean. Securing a route
through western Iraq and eastern
Syria has been a core goal of Iran’s
leaders over the past three years,
particularly as the presence of Isis in
both areas has withered.
Regional offi cials say the
establishment of such a corridor
would entrench Iran’s infl uence in
the centre of the region , where Iran
has built a formidable presence in
the ruins of the Syrian war.Drone warfare The stealth arms race
gathering pace in Iran-Israel confl ict
“The Iraqi government has
no control over its borders,” said
Hisham al-Hashimi, an Iraqi
researcher and government adviser.
“The government turns a blind eye
to the operations that these groups
run on the border because they
played a signifi cant role in the fi ght
against Isis ... The main concern is
the possibility of the transportation
of missiles from Tehran to Beirut
that will target and threaten the
security of Israel.”
Muhandis said the apparent
Israeli strikes – the latest of which
killed two members of Kata’ib
Hezbollah near the Iraqi border town
of Bukamal on Monday – had been
carried out with US support.
“Recently they surveyed our
bases instead of Isis and collected
information and data on the bases
and weapon warehouses,” he said.
“The targeting of PMU headquarters
is clear evidence of the full control of
the US military over Iraqi airspace.
Israeli offi cials have repeatedly
claimed a consolidated Iranian
presence near Israel’s borders
would be intolerable. At the same
time, they have insisted that fi tting
guid ance systems to the thousands
of “dumb” rockets in Hezbollah’s
arsenal poses an existential threat
to the country. An Israeli military
spokesman, L t Col Jonathan
Conricus, said Iran’s eff orts appeared
to have stalled.
“The Iranians are nowhere near
where they had planned to be at
this stage,” he said. “They are far
behind, in terms of quantity of
troops and terms of the facilities and
the capabilities that they intended to
have in place in Syria, and that they
tried to equip Hezbollah with.
“The negative side is they are
still in Syria, they are still trying
to entrench themselves, they are
still spreading violence across
the region – whether it be Yemen,
Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, the Gulf area
and other places. When it comes to
our perspective, we see that they are
still trying to establish themselves in
Syria with off ensive capabilities.
“There is no other explanation for
what the Iranians are doing in Syria,
what the Iranian Revolutionary
Guard Quds Force under [senior
commander] Qassem Suleimani is
doing in Syria , than to threaten Israel
and to have military capabilities
capable of striking Israel.”
Government sources in Iraq say
one of the targets hit, allegedly by
Israel, in Amerli in July was a convoy
of refrigerated trucks that contained
medium-range guided missiles.
“They were going to be sent
overland. The Iranians still don’t
know where their fi nal route to
Syria is going to be. Nothing is really
working so far, so they are trying as
many routes as possible .”US, Iranian and Iraqi offi cials say
that since mid-July Israel has fl own
advanced machines, fi tted with
missiles, hundreds of miles into
Iraq to attack fi ve targets linked to
Iranian proxies operating there.
Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, an
Iranian ally and the deputy leader
of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation
Units (PMU) – a network of militias
that coalesced to fi ght Islamic
State – said: “We have accurate and
confi rmed information that this
year the Americans introduced
four Israeli drones via Azerbaijan to
operate within the US fl eet to carry
out fl ights and target Iraqi military
bases.”‘We see that the
Iranians are still
trying to establish
themselves in Syria
with off ensive
capabilities’Jonathan Conricus
Israeli army spokesman▼ Forensic investigators of Lebanon’s
military intelligence at the scene in
Beirut where two drones came down
PHOTOGRAPH: ANWAT AMRO/AFP/GETTY The Iranian
military unveils
‘smart bombs’,
precision-guided
munitions that
can be used on
drones. It denied
Israel’s claim to
have thwarted
an Iranian
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