The deputy leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziad Nakhleh, has said that
rockets fired by Hamas and the “Palestinian resistance” at Israeli towns and
cities are of Iranian origin, Lebanon’s el-Nashra newspaper reported on
Monday.
Some of the weapons were manufactured locally in an Iranian
factory, Nakhleh said, adding that the rockets Hamas has fired at Tel Aviv have
a range of “up to 80 kilometers.”
However, Nakhleh denied that the
escalation of violence by Hamas and Islamic Jihad equated to the implementation
of a scenario devised by Iran.
“Did Iran tell Israel to kill [Hamas
military wing de facto leader Ahmed] Jabari?” Nakhleh said.
Israel has
said that the long-range rockets that Hamas has fired at more northern targets –
including Tel Aviv – are Iranianmade Fajr-5 artillery rockets.
Iran’s
Lebanese proxy Hezbollah had also fired Fajr-5 rockets – which the terror group
named Khaibar-1 rockets – at Israel during the Second Lebanon War in 2006. With
a range of approximately 75 kilometers and a 45-kilogram warhead, the Fajr-5 is
launched from a mobile platform that contains up to four rockets per
launcher.
In a speech over the weekend, Hezbollah secretary-general
Hassan Nasrallah praised Hamas for firing Fajr-5 rockets at Israel, saying that
the launch of the Iranian missiles was a “major development” in Hamas’s conflict
with Israel.
Following Nasrallah’s remarks, Iran moved to distance itself
on Sunday from the charge that it is involved in supplying Hamas with weapons.
The chairman of Iran’s Majlis National Security and Foreign Policy Commission
Alaeddin Boroujerdi said “the resistance” does not need Iranian rockets and
claimed Iran’s support for Hamas extended only to “spiritual support.”
On
Monday, however, Iran’s Persian-language Fars News, which is closely affiliated
with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, published a lengthy article
examining the role of the Fajr family of artillery rockets in Tehran’s
asymmetric warfare doctrine.
Iran’s military doctrine has historically
included elements of asymmetric warfare designed to allow the Islamic Republic
to combat a technologically superior enemy such as the US or Israel. The
asymmetric doctrine also includes Iran supplying and training its proxies
Hezbollah and Hamas, according to the Center for Strategic and International
Studies.
While the Fars article does not mention Hamas, it does discuss
in some detail the role and operating mechanisms of the newest version of the
Fajr-5 rocket, first announced in 2006. According to Fars, the upgraded Fajr-5
is a two-stage artillery rocket system with a 190-kilometer range designed to
“attack enemy forces, including command, logistics and economic centers; radar
stations; communications networks; airports; factories and so forth.”