According to a Fox News report, Iran has been using civilian flights to smuggle weapons from Tehran to Beirut during the past two months. Weapons were reportedly transported on Fars Air Qeshm flights. Fox explains this is likely a shell company that was established solely for this purpose, to get weapons from Iran to Hezbollah without being detected.

The sources identified two rare and unusual Qeshm Fars Air flights from Tehran to the international airport in Beirut during the past two months.

Fox reports that the first flight was on July 9, 2018, using a Boeing 747 that left an air force base in Iran and made a stopover in Damascus and then continued to Beirut, calling the flight path “most uncharacteristic”. Using irregular flight routes, the airline distanced itself from commercial flights and thereby hoped to avoid detection. There was another flight on August 2nd. This flight however did not make the Damascus stopover, but it did travel via an irregular route too, traveling north of Syria, explaining this is rarely done by commercial airliners.

According to Western intelligence sources, the airplanes were carrying materials required for the construction of precision weaponry.

Qeshm Fars Air is considered one of the various pseudo-civilian airlines used for arms-smuggling by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the elite Al-Quds force led by Qassem Soleimani. Back in October 2017, President Trump imposed sanctions on the IRGC and the Al-Quds force.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)