BICOM

Israel’s Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned Hezbollah that Israel is fully aware of its underground weapons factories in Lebanon.

In a briefing with military correspondents on Sunday, Lieberman said Israel is “doing what needs to be done,” and called the construction of the factories, which are reportedly being built with Iranian expertise, a significant event that Israel can under no circumstances ignore.

Lieberman’s remarks echoed those of Military Intelligence Chief Maj.-Gen. Herzi Halevi who told the the Herzliya Conference in June that “Iran has been working for the past year to set up indigenous infrastructures for producing precise munitions both in Lebanon and Yemen. We can’t ignore that, and we won’t”.

Iran allegedly decided to build missile factories in Lebanon after weapons transports from Syria to Lebanon were often destroyed, reportedly by the IDF, and that missile factories in Lebanon would be more secure.

Writing in Yediot Ahronoth, military affairs correspondent Yossi Yehoshua believes the idea of building weapons factories in Lebanon came from Iran, rather than the Hezbollah leadership. Yehoshua said “it is reasonable to assume that Israel will not attack the factories while they are still in their initial stages of construction for operational reasons (Israel will wait to see what exactly is being built and manufactured), and in order to first exhaust diplomatic options”.

The first report about a missile factory appeared in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida in March. The report said that the factory could produce rockets with a range of more than 500 kilometres, land-based anti-ship missiles, antitank missiles, armoured vehicles and drones that can carry explosives.