Israel exposes Hezbollah facility allegedly used for guided missile production

The Israel Defense Forces announces today that it has identified a facility in southern Lebanon being used by Hezbollah to convert and manufacture precision-guided missiles.

The compound located near Nabi Chit in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon was established several years ago by Iran and Hezbollah for weapons manufacturing, the army says in a statement, which came less than two weeks after a drone attack in Beirut attributed to Israel had reportedly damaged key components of the project.

Shortly before the IDF lifts a self-imposed embargo on its finding, international media spokesman Jonathan Conricus tweets that the army would be exposing another one of Hezbollah chairman Hassan Nasrallah’s “lies.”

In a speech televised on Saturday, Nasrallah said that while his Iran-backed organization has precision missiles, “We do not have precision missile factories. This is a lie and a pretext that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is adopting to carry out aggression.”

The army says the site it exposed has recently established “a dedicated assembly line for precision weapons” and contains several machines supplied by Iran “designed to manufacture the motors and the warheads of missiles with an accuracy of less than 10 meters.”

“This facility is of superior importance to the Hezbollah precision missile project, which is why Hezbollah, in fear of strikes, evacuated precious and unique equipment from the compound to civilian locations in Beirut,” the army says, appearing to hint at the reasoning behind the August 25 strike attributed to Israel.

The IDF details that the exposed factory is divided into sections for motor production, quality assurance, manufacturing of explosives for warheads and logistics.

— Jacob Magid