The Israel Defense Forces announced on Tuesday that it had identified a facility in southern Lebanon being used by Hezbollah to convert and manufacture precision-guided missiles.
The compound located near Nabi Sheet in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon was established several years ago by Iran and Hezbollah for weapons manufacturing, the army said in a statement, which came less than two weeks after a drone attack in Beirut attributed to Israel reportedly damaged key components of the project.
Shortly before the IDF lifted a self-imposed embargo on its findings, international media spokesman Jonathan Conricus tweeted that the army would be exposing another one of Hezbollah chairman Hassan Nasrallah’s “lies.”
In a speech televised on Saturday, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said that while his Iran-backed organization has some precision missiles, there was no production taking place in Lebanon.
“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,” he said.
Hezbollah is believed to have over 150,000 missiles, but only a small number of them can be guided to specific sites. Israel fears in a future war, the terror group could use a barrage of precision missiles to attack sensitive facilities and overwhelm its air defense array.
Israeli planes have carried out airstrikes in Syria to foil efforts by Iran to smuggle the advanced weapons into Lebanon, according to authorities. Jerusalem believes Tehran is now trying to develop domestic production in Lebanon because of the danger involved in trying to move the weapons from Iran to Lebanon.
The army said that 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.”
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