Nov 8, 2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
Powerful Russian anti-ship missiles acquired by Hezbollah give it
the means to deliver on its leader’s veiled threat against US warships and
underline the grave risks of any regional war, sources familiar with the
group’s arsenal say.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned Washington last week his group had something in store for the US vessels deployed to the region since war erupted last month between the Palestinian group Hamas and Israel, shaking the wider Middle East.
Two sources in Lebanon familiar with the Iran-backed group’s arsenal say he
was referring to Hezbollah’s greatly enhanced anti-ship missile capabilities,
including the Russian-made Yakhont missile with a range of 300 km (186 miles).
Reports by media and analysts have for years indicated that Hezbollah
acquired Yakhont missiles in Syria after deploying there more than a decade ago
to help President Bashar al-Assad fight a civil war.
Hezbollah has never
confirmed possessing the weapon.
The Shi’ite group’s media office did not immediately respond when reached
for comment for this story.
Washington says its Mediterranean naval deployment - comprising two
aircraft carriers and their supporting ships - aims to prevent the conflict
from spreading by deterring Iran, which backs groups including Hamas,
Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Hezbollah perceives the US warships as a direct threat because of their
ability to hit the group and its allies.
Nasrallah said in a speech on Friday that the US warships in the
Mediterranean “do not scare us, and will not scare us.”
“We have prepared for the fleets with which you threaten us,” he said.
The White House said after Nasrallah delivered his Friday speech that
Hezbollah must not exploit the Hamas-Israel war, and the United States did not
want to see the conflict expand into Lebanon.
One of the sources said Hezbollah’s anti-ship capabilities had developed
enormously since 2006, when the group first demonstrated it could strike a
vessel at sea by hitting an Israeli warship in the Mediterranean during a war
with Israel.
“There’s the Yakhont, and of course there are other things besides it,” the
source said, without elaborating.
The source added that use of this weapon by Hezbollah against hostile
warships would indicate the conflict had escalated into a major regional war.
Paying attention
Three current and one former US official said Hezbollah has built an
impressive array of weapons, including anti-ship missiles.
“We’re obviously paying a lot of attention to that... and we’re taking what
capabilities they have seriously,” one official said, without commenting
directly on whether the group had the Yakhont missile.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment candidly about
Hezbollah’s capabilities.
The US officials added that the US naval power recently deployed to the
region includes defenses against incoming missiles. They did not elaborate.
The Pentagon has deployed warships to the eastern Mediterranean since Oct.
7, when Hamas gunmen stormed Israel from the Gaza Strip in an attack Israel
says killed 1,400 people.
Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed more than 10,000 Palestinians
since then, Palestinian officials say.
Nasrallah on Friday warned Washington that preventing a regional war
depended on halting the Israeli assault. Hezbollah has been trading fire with
Israeli forces at the Lebanese border since Oct. 8. That marks the most serious
escalation there since the 2006 war.
But Hezbollah has so far used only a fraction of its arsenal and the
violence has mostly been contained to the border area.
Other Iran-aligned groups such as Yemen’s Houthis have also fired drones
towards Israel while Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim militias have fired at US
forces in Iraq and Syria.
The ground-launched Yakhont approaches its target at low altitude - 10 to
15 meters (yards) off the ground - to avoid detection, according to a report by
the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
The Yakhont, a variant of the P-800 Oniks missile first developed in 1993,
was developed in 1999 for export by a Russian defense firm and can be launched
from the air, the ground or submarines, CSIS said.
Asked about the sources’ accounts of Hezbollah having acquired Yakhont
missiles, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “First of all, this is news
without any confirmation at all. We do not know if it is true or not.”
“Secondly, we do not have such information.”
The Russian defense ministry did not reply to a written request for
comment. The Syrian information ministry did not immediately reply to emailed
questions from Reuters.
‘Prepared and ready’
Nasrallah’s Friday speech marked one of his strongest warnings yet to the
United States, which holds his group responsible for a suicide attack that
destroyed US Marines headquarters in Beirut in 1983, killing 241 servicemen,
and for a suicide attack on the US embassy the same year that killed 63 people.
While Hezbollah has denied being behind those attacks, Nasrallah indirectly
referred to them in his speech, saying those who defeated the United States in
Lebanon in the early 1980s were “still alive.”
Nasser Qandil, a Lebanese political analyst close to Hezbollah, explained
how the Yakhont missiles in the group’s arsenal could be used against US
warships, in remarks on his private YouTube channel posted last month.
He described the missile as “the most important prize” of Hezbollah’s
involvement in the war in Syria, where the group helped turn the tide of the
civil war in Assad’s favor.
“Yes, Hezbollah is prepared and ready,” Qandil said.
The two sources who spoke to Reuters said Hezbollah obtained the weapon
from Syria whilst fighting in support of Assad, whose military has long been
armed by Russia.
Hezbollah keeps its arsenal and how it is sourced shrouded in secrecy. In
rare comments on the topic in 2021, Nasrallah explained how the group had
obtained Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles via Syria.
In an interview with the Lebanese, Iran-aligned broadcaster al-Mayadeen, he
said the Syrian defense ministry had purchased the weapons from Russia for
Syrian use, and Hezbollah had later taken them as a form of “support” to defend
Lebanon.
Hezbollah used the weapon extensively in the 2006 war.
Moscow said in 2010 it had signed a deal to send anti-ship cruise missiles
including a version of the Yakhont to Damascus.
Reuters, Al Arabiya