Mehmet Badawi: Iranian UN representation denies that weapons flood into Iran and Syria along with humanitarian aid, as Israel targets transports
Reuters reports that within the transports of humanitarian support materials into Syria following the devastating Mw 7.8 earthquake in early February this year, Iran also moved weaponry and other military equipment across the border. Reuters is citing internal sources within Iran, Syria, Israel and the western support structure, and notes the Iranian intend to prop up the Syrian state against an Israeli attack the Tehran and Damascus regimes suspects given the deep hostility between the two sides.
The earthquake on the 6th of February 2023 took over 57 300 lives, and led to huge amounts of international supplies donations, mostly transported by planes. Syrian authorities have granted landing rights at its airports to direct flights from Russia and Iran. This effort therefore included hundreds of flights dispatched from Iran, carrying Iranian as well as international aid, arriving to Aleppo, Latakia and Damascus, within the period of roughly seven weeks. The majority of those deployments verifiably contained purely humanitarian aid and have been instrumental in the rebuilding efforts.
Reuters however reports that parts of the transports contained military technology, specifically communication equipment, radar batteries, replacement parts needed for the planned modernization of the Syrian anti-ballistic missile systems (supplied by Iran) and weapons and weapon parts. The UN Iranian representation strongly denied the claims.
Israel conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria in the recent years, as it remains committed to the policy of neither denying, nor confirming. It nonetheless verified the claims that it had targeted the bases of military groups affiliated with Iran, within the borders of Syria. Israel insisted that the transports of aids it had targeted were chosen on the basis of concrete intelligence confirming their decoy nature, and contained military equipment wholly or predominantly.
Syrian military defector, Colonel Abduljabbar Akaidi, said for Reuters: ‘Israel’s strikes also targeted a meeting of commanders of Iranian militias and shipments of electronic chips to upgrade weapons systems.’ The source did not confirm the location of those supposed meetings, or any resulting casualties of belligerent or civilian nature, only that they have been selected by the Israeli on the basis of strong surveillance data and seek to prevent the abuse of the humanitarian aid convoys by the Iranian army, which remains in stark opposition to Jerusalem and is allegedly poised to set of a nuclear arms race with it, should the attacks continue. Both parties deny their intention to escalate the conflict on their own accord. What is verifiable is therefore only that Aleppo’s runway was hit by Israeli strikes after two Iranian cargo planes landed.
This attack is further increasing the tension in the region even in the context of a humanitarian crisis that has resulted in tens of thousands of immediate deaths, as well as over 130 000 reported injuries. The earthquake directly affected near 16 million Turks and 4 million buildings, with 345 000 homes destroyed and more than 20% of Turkey’s food production severely impacted. In Syria, estimated 5,4 million people were made homeless by the earthquake, and over half of Syria’s population has been directly affected, including over 4,500 deaths in rebel-held areas. The Israeli strikes on what they cannot prove are not purely humanitarian convoys deserve international condemnation they are bound to not receive.
Composed by Mehmet Badawi for Denuclearise.com
