Drowning in Drones

An Israeli warplane shot a drone into the Mediterranean just west of the Haifa shoreline. The drone came from Lebanon, and Israeli media immediately reported that it was sent by Hizballah—even though the prime minister and the IDF spokesman, in their public statements on the incident, made no such claim.

 

Amos Harel, military analyst for Haaretz, reports that the reason for that omission is probably that it wasn’t Hizballah that sent the plane but, rather, Iran—specifically its Revolutionary Guards contingent in Lebanon.

“The drone episode has left the Israeli security apparatus in a state of confusion and perplexity. It’s part of Hezbollah’s psychological war against Israel,” Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese Army general, told The Daily Star.

“Despite Hezbollah’s denial of its involvement, last week’s drone could be Ayyoub II,” said Jaber, director of the Middle East Center for Political Studies and Research, a Beirut-based think tank.

He was referring to Hezbollah’s Ayyoub drone that was downed by Israel on Oct. 6 after it successfully managed to breach Israeli airspace.

Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah said last year that Ayyoub, an Iranian-made drone that flew over Israel and gathered intelligence, was part of the party’s deterrence strategy against the Jewish state.

 

He warned then that it wouldn’t be the last operation by the party and said that the sophisticated aircraft was made in Iran and assembled by Hezbollah.

The Hezbollah drone in October flew 55 km into southern Israel before being shot down by an F-16.

The Israeli military said the drone shot down last week was detected in Lebanese skies and intercepted by an F-16 fighter jet 5 nautical miles off the coast of the northern city of Haifa.

Political analyst Talal Atrissi concurred with Jaber’s assessment.

“The drone incident has put the Israeli political and military leaders in a fix and dealt a blow to the Israeli intelligence security,” Atrissi, an expert on Iran and the Middle East, told The Daily Star.

“The drone flight over Israel has sent a clear message saying that Israel’s security, despite tight measures, can be penetrated, and it has actually been penetrated,” he said.

Atrissi, a lecturer at the state-run Lebanese University, said the drone flight was also intended to send another message to the Americans and Israelis, warning them against military intervention in war-torn Syria.

U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against its people or the transfer of stockpiles to terrorists would cross a “red line” that would compel the United States to act.

Atrissi said there was a big possibility that Iran was behind sending the drone toward Israel.

“The side that sent the drone wanted to monitor, photograph and transmit information from inside Israel on military installations and institutions. This side was apparently preparing for a confrontation with Israel,” he said, citing tension between the U.S. and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other over Tehran’s nuclear program and the crisis in Syria.

Last week, Hezbollah denied sending a drone toward Israel, several hours after the Jewish state said its fighter jets shot down an unmanned aircraft over the Mediterranean that originated in Lebanon.

Jaber said Hezbollah’s denial of involvement in the incident has also left the Israelis in a state of confusion similar to their uncertainty over the party’s arsenal of missiles.

“Israel is still in a dilemma over the size and type of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal. Israel is ready to pay millions of dollars to find out if Hezbollah really possessed surface-to-air missiles,” he said.
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