U.S. intelligence is stating that the Wagner Group, the Russian paramilitary organization, may try to give an air-defense system to the terrorist group Hezbollah, situated on Israel’s northern border, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The Russian SA-22 system can fire antiaircraft missiles and air-defense guns.
“Wagner has personnel in Syria, where Hezbollah fighters have also been present,” the Journal noted.
Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in 2008 that “Israel will be destroyed in a few years.” In 2020, he said, “When Khomeini declared Al Quds Day in 1979, it was a culmination point of his personal struggle against Israel, which he began addressing in 1960. Khamenei was restating the position of Najaf and Qom regarding Palestine, a position that remains a consistent position until the present. This position is that Palestine from river to sea must be liberated. Israel has no legitimacy to exist at all and must be destroyed.”
Russian and Hezbollah forces fought together to support the Assad regime in Syria. In November 2018, the U.S. Department of the Treasury noted that the Iranian regime, working with Russian companies, was supplying millions of barrels of oil to the Syrian government led by the Assad regime, which then facilitated the movement of hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars (USD) to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) for onward transfer to HAMAS and Hezbollah.
A letter to a senior official at the Central Bank of Iran confirmed $63 million had been sent to benefit Hezbollah, the Royal United Services Institute, the world’s oldest and the U.K.’s leading defense and security think tank, reported last May, adding:
In May 2022, the Treasury Department issued designations targeting this same Hizbullah-IRGC-Qods Force oil smuggling network, and noted that these sanctions evasion schemes which were funding both Hizbullah and the IRGC-Qods Force were “backed by senior levels of the Russian Federation government and state-run economic organs.”
In late October, Nir Barkat, Israel’s Minister of Economy, warned Iran that Israel would strike back if Hezbollah entered the war. He said that not only would Israel “eliminate Hezbollah,” Israel would “actually target Iran” and “wipe them out.”
“The plan of Iran is to attack Israel on all fronts. If we find they intend to target Israel, we will not just retaliate to those fronts, but we will go to the head of the snake, which is Iran,” he said. “The Ayatollahs in Iran are not going to sleep good at night, we are going to make sure they pay a heavy price if, God forbid, they open the northern front.”
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