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Still image from video released by Hezbollah said to show tunnels in an underground Lebanese facility called Imad 4, in an undisclosed location in Lebanon.
1 / 4Photo: Hezbollah Via Lebanese Media/TT
Heavy vehicles loaded with robots thunder through dark tunnels. A hatch opens to the sky. To dramatic notes, a launch pad is made ready for attack.
Hezbollah’s new propaganda video provides a rare insight into the movement’s secret tunnel network – which is judged by Israel to be significantly larger, and therefore a much worse threat, than Hamas’s dito in Gaza.
An armored gate slides up to the strains of suspense music à la Hollywood. In the background, alarm signals are raised before Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah speaks.
– The resistance in Lebanon today has weapons, equipment and capacity, he thunders.
The video – a four-and-a-half-minute display of alleged combat potential – is said to show Hezbollah’s vast network of underground tunnels. Motorcycles and trucks, some loaded with robots, move through wide, floodlit tunnels belonging to the Lebanese movement, closely allied with Iran and branded a terror by the United States, among others.
The video should be taken as a warning, according to Nicholas Blanford, Hezbollah sympathizer active at the Atlantic Council think tank.
– This was a message to the Israelis: “We have barely scratched the surface of the kind of damage we can inflict on you,” he told Qatar-based Al Jazeera.
Can reach Israel
The world’s concern about a full-scale war between Israel and Hezbollah – and by extension Iran – has risen since the start of the Gaza war, not least since Shia militia commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya were killed in Beirut and Tehran respectively at the end of July. Since then, Hezbollah and Iran have threatened retaliation.
In the Israeli media, the tunnel system in the video is described as significantly more advanced and sophisticated than Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza. All told, it is believed to be hundreds of kilometers – including a 4.5-mile-long, wide “attack tunnel” in southern Lebanon, reports The Times of Israel.
A representative of Hezbollah claims, according to the newspaper, that the robots shown in the video can reach around 14 km. If true, they could reach targets deep inside Israel.
Iran and North Korea
In total, the movement is believed to have an arsenal of around 150,000 projectiles of varying types and capacities, from smaller rockets to precision-guided robots. Many of the weapons are believed to be hidden underground.
Similar tunnels have long been believed to exist in Iran. Shortly after Hezbollah released its video on Friday, Iran claimed to have similar underground “robot cities” across the country – from where it says it can reach Israel, Turkish state-run Anatolia reports.
Hezbollah is considered to have received help to construct the tunnels with the help of Iran in particular, but also North Korea, according to The Times of Israel.
FACT Hezbollah
An Islamist movement, created in the early 1980s as a reaction to a conflict situation that is very similar to today’s. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had used southern Lebanon as a base for attacks on northern Israel, prompting Israel to invade in 1982.
Inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran a few years earlier, Lebanese Islamists formed Hezbollah (“Party of God”), a name chosen by Iranian leader Khomeini.
A stated main goal has been to throw out all “colonialists”. In practice, this has meant that much of the armed struggle has been directed against Israel – seen as the West’s representative in the Middle East.
In Lebanon, Hezbollah functions as “a state within a state”, with a military power at least as large as the country’s army and a strong role in politics and social life.
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