Iran Pays, Syria Smuggles, and Hezbollah Receives...

Why doesn't the UN deal with this???

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday released photographs taken by drone aircraft of the southern Lebanon village where a Hezbollah arms depot exploded on Monday. The photos show persons, possibly Hezbollah operatives, removing something resembling a 4-meter-long missile from the depot, loading it onto a truck and moving it to a hiding place in a different village.

A senior military source said on Tuesday that Syria has made a clear strategic decision to make available to Hezbollah every type of military hardware in its arsenal. According to the same source, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon is wary of entering Shi'ite villages in the area and generally avoids trying to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which forbids Hezbollah from having any arms inside the villages south of the Litani River.

The initial reports of the incident on Monday spoke of an explosion at the home of a Hezbollah operative in the village of Tayr Filsi, east of Tyre, in which five persons were killed. However, Hezbollah and the Lebanese Army maintain that only a single person was injured in the blast, and claim that the explosion occurred during an attempt to deal with unexploded Israeli ordnance.

The senior IDF source said that weapons are now being smuggled from Syria into Lebanon on a regular, weekly basis. "Iran pays, Syria smuggles and Hezbollah receives," he explained.

According to the officer Hezbollah has tens of thousands of rockets, many of which are kept in about 300 storage facilities spread throughout the 160 or so Shi'ite villages in southern Lebanon.

"Syria feels quite comfortable," the army source said. "There is no international pressure [on Damascus] to break off its ties with Iran or the 'axis of evil.' It pays no price for its role in the smuggling."

The officer added that the IDF has taken notice of increasing concern among the UNIFIL peacekeepers when they enter Shi'ite villages to search for weapons. "In places where they still try to carry out searches, there is such intense friction with Hezbollah that the UN people usually opt to give up," the senior IDF source said.