Israeli naval forces on Wednesday intercepted an Iranian arms vessel carrying medium-range missiles in the Red Sea, about 930 miles from the Israeli coast. The shipment was headed for the Gaza Strip via Sudan.Times of Israel says the rockets have a range of 200 km, not 100.
Special forces from the Shayetet 13 (Flotilla 13) unit overpowered the cargo vessel named the KLOS C – which is registered in Panama – in the early morning hours. A search aboard the vessel uncovered dozens of 302mm rockets, which are manufactured in Syria and were fired into Israel by Hezbollah during the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The rockets have a range of about 100 kilometers.
"We have conclusive evidence that there were rockets on board the ship, and we have proof and can say with certainty that Iran is behind this operation," a senior Israel Defense Forces officer said.
The officer said that the rockets originated in Syria, were loaded onto airplanes at the Damascus airport from which they were transported to Iran. There they were boarded onto the cargo ship, which set sail about 10 days ago en route to a port in Sudan.
The IDF tracked the ship, saying it sailed north toward Iraq instead of heading directly toward the African country. The army believes that, in Iraq, the rockets were covered with cement bags in an attempt to disguise the shipment after which the vessel continued to sail toward Sudan.
IDF video of the background:
IDF video (via Haaretz) of the weapons on the ship:
Iran has not been too friendly towards Hamas in the past year, so it seems likely that this shipment was not meant for Hamas - but for Islamic Jihad. Hamas is regularly criticized for being too peaceful, as both Fatah and more extreme terror groups like to point out that the "Islamic Resistance Movement" isn't doing very much resisting. (None of them pretend that the word "resistance "means anything other than violence.)
An Islamic Jihad rocket towards Ben Gurion Airport or Haifa would be a better recruiting tool than a hundred of their cheesy videos.
There are still some tunnels from Egypt to Gaza that Egypt hasn't found, and Arabic media mentions rumors of terrorists paying Egyptian fishermen to transfer weapons to Gaza boats.