In the Middle East, the arms sector is seeing double. THE Hezbollaha Lebanese paramilitary group in conflict with Israel, allegedly used a copy of an anti-tank missile belonging to the IDF, the Israeli defense force. In any case, this is what the Hebrew State’s intelligence says. To understand how this is possible, we have to go back almost twenty years. During the war against Israel in Lebanon in 2006, Shiite militia fighters allegedly seized the first Israeli Spike anti-tank missiles, reports the New York Times.
Once stolen, these advanced weapons would have been shipped to Hezbollah’s main financial backer, Iran, which would have carried out the cloning by reverse engineering. A method which consists of taking apart a system to understand it and possibly reproduce it without initial knowledge of how it was designed.
As a reminder, Iran has been financing and arming “the party of God” for decades, and the group joined attacks on Israel in support of its Gaza ally, Hamas, shortly after it carried out an attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. Note that Tehran has the habit of copying weapons systems designed by its adversaries, then turning them against them. One of the most striking examples: the Revolutionary Guards announced, in 2014, that they had recreated a spy drone identical to the one they had captured in 2011, and which belonged to the Americans.
A fourth generation of Almas?
Thanks to Iran, Hezbollah is playing a perverse game, firing copied missiles at its enemy’s military bases. Like a return to sender. Hezbollah launches these missiles, renamed “Almas missiles” (“diamond” in Arabic), with “sufficient precision and power to constitute a significant challenge for Israeli military forces”, explains the New York Times. With a range of up to 16 kilometers, the Almas is equipped with a thermal detector and can engage its targets with a ballistic trajectory. In practical terms, this means that the missile can hit tanks from above, where they are most vulnerable, and not from the side. This type of missile had already been used in the Iranian army. It was first unveiled in 2021, during a military exercise.
THE New York Times specifies that “the Almas can carry two types of warheads: one explodes in two phases, facilitating armor penetration, the other explodes in a fireball.” There are at least three known variants of Almas missiles, each improved over the last. In June, the Alma Research and Education Center, an Israeli research center cited by the American daily, said Hezbollah appears to be using a newer, fourth generation, which, among other improvements, sends clearer images of its flight to its operators.
Hezbollah could manufacture Almas in Lebanon
The Almas missile clearly illustrates the growing technical advances in Iran and marked by a normalization of cloning practices. At the risk of changing the balance of power in the region? “What was once a gradual diffusion of older generations of missiles has transformed into a rapid deployment of cutting-edge technologies on active battlefields,” emphasizes the New York Times Mohammed Al-Basha, a Middle East arms analyst who runs a Virginia-based risk consulting firm. But to reduce its dependence on Iranian supply chains, Hezbollah now has the capacity to manufacture the Almas in Lebanon, according to Israeli defense officials.
Hezbollah’s military capabilities are not negligible, since the pro-Iranian group could hold between 120,000 and 200,000 missiles, according to a report published in March 2024 of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. US and Israeli officials told CNN last June that Hezbollah could likely penetrate Israel’s elaborate air defense system, called Iron Dome, in the north of the country, including with a large-scale attack using precision-guided missiles. Furthermore, the CIA estimates, according to our colleagues, Echoesthe strength of Hezbollah’s “army” is 45,000 men, including 20,000 full-time.