Security officials are warning that there is a growing concern that Iran is taking advantage of the earthquake in Syria to smuggle convoys weapons disguised as humanitarian aid for citizens that have become homeless.
Sources in the IDF claim that this is a more complicated intelligence and operational challenge than usual because Iran claimed before the earthquake more than once that Israel is attacking humanitarian convoys that are meant to supply the Syrian people with food.
Now, the sources say, Iran has been given the legitimacy to broaden the scope of the truck convoys that make their way from Iran through Iraq to Syria more than in the past. The sources confirmed that in the last week, trucks passed through that route but refused to comment on what they were carrying.
In the middle of December 2022, then-IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi took responsibility for an attack on convoys of weapons that was attributed to Israel at the Iraq-Syria border in a speech at a conference in memory of former chief of staff Amnon Lipkin Shahak.
"We could have not known a few weeks ago about the Syrian convoy that passes through Iraq to Syria, which out of 25 trucks, right of them were carrying weapons," he said. "That's where we need to send the planes to attack, harm and return."
In the attack that Kohavi was talking about, vehicles in the convoy were bombed, and at least 14 people were killed - most of them members of pro-Iranian militias, according to Arabic-language media. After the attack, Israeli military officials said that the convoy that was attacked at the Iraqi-Syrian border wasn't only carrying fuel but also weapons and ammunition. This contradicted the claim of the regime in Tehran that it was a humanitarian delivery.
Last week, Israel offered humanitarian aid through Russian mediation to Syria after the earthquake that killed thousands, but the Syrian regimes refused it.