IDF details yearslong efforts against Hezbollah arms smuggling unit

In what has been an open secret for years, the IDF says it has been operating against Hezbollah’s weapons smuggling unit in Syria to prevent Iranian arms from reaching the terror group in Lebanon.

A series of strikes during the war have targeted Hezbollah’s Unit 4400, which is tasked with delivering weapons from Iran and its proxies to Lebanon.

Unit 4400 was established in 2000, and, with Iranian support, it built numerous “strategic routes” along the Syria-Lebanon border, the military says.

Thousands of trucks and hundreds of planes carrying missiles and other components for Hezbollah have traveled from Iran to Syria, and later to Lebanon in recent years, the IDF says.

The strikes against Unit 4400 during the war have included the assassinations of the head of the unit, Muhammad Ja’far Qassir in Beirut in early October, and his replacement, Ali Hassan Gharib, in Damascus, several weeks later, alongside other top commanders.

The IDF says that it has been striking Hezbollah’s smuggling routes between Syria and Lebanon “not only in the last few months, but in a years-long effort.”

One strike in early October destroyed a 3.5-kilometer-long tunnel that crossed between Lebanon and Syria, which the IDF says was used by Hezbollah to smuggle and store Iranian weapons. Construction work on the major tunnel began in 2009 and was completed a decade later, according to the IDF.

The IDF says its series of strikes against Unit 4400 have “damaged the ability of the Hezbollah terror organization to strengthen its stockpile of weapons and thus to fire at the citizens of the State of Israel.”