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Iran Arms Shipments to Hezbollah Pass through Doha

Hezbollah displays an Iranian-made Fajr 5 missile at a military parade in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
Hezbollah displays an Iranian-made Fajr 5 missile at a military parade in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
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Iran Arms Shipments to Hezbollah Pass through Doha

Hezbollah displays an Iranian-made Fajr 5 missile at a military parade in southern Lebanon. (AFP)
Hezbollah displays an Iranian-made Fajr 5 missile at a military parade in southern Lebanon. (AFP)

Iran has been increasing its shipments of advanced weaponry to the Lebanese “Hezbollah” party, deliveries that now include Global Positioning System (GPS) components to make previously unguided rockets into precision guided-missiles, said American and western intelligence sources according to a Fox News report.

One of the Iranian flights arrived in Lebanon three days ago, officials tell Fox News.

Iran’s Fars Air Qeshm flight number QFZ-9950 departed Tehran International Airport on Tuesday at 9:33 am local time, and flew to an unknown destination, according to flight data obtained by Fox News.

Later in the day, the Boeing 747 jet touched down in Syria’s capital Damascus before continuing on to Beirut, arriving just past 2 pm.

On Wednesday evening, the Iranian cargo plane departed Beirut for Doha, Qatar arriving just after midnight local time, and returned to Iran’s capital Thursday at 6:31 pm.

Western intelligence sources said the Iranian cargo plane carried weapons components, including GPS devices to make precision-guided weapons in Iranian factories inside Lebanon.

The United States and Israel, as well as other western intelligence agencies, have offered evidence that Iran has operated similar weapons factories in Syria and Yemen, in addition to Lebanon, said Fox News.

Last month, at his address at the UN General Assembly in New York, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shared photos of what he said were three Hezbollah “secret sites” near Beirut’s international airport, locations where the GPS components from Tehran were being assembled to turn the rockets into precision-guided missiles capable of striking deep inside Israel “within an accuracy of 10 meters (11 yards).”

Western sources told Fox News the weapons components from this week’s chartered 747 fight from Tehran were bound for these Hezbollah secret sites near the Beirut airport to target Israel in the future.
A former head of Israeli military intelligence said Israel will not allow Iran’s weapons shipment to Lebanon and Syria to go unchecked, said Fox News.

“Israel is determined not to let it happen,” said retired Israeli Gen. Amos Yadlin. “This is a source of concern because if the Iranians, on the one hand, are determined to build this precision project with ballistic missiles, and the Israelis are determined not to let it happen—this is a recipe for collision.”

The Israeli military says it has conducted more than 200 airstrikes inside Syria since last year, targeting Iranian weapons shipments.

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Pro-Palestinian Protest Leader Details 104 Days Spent in US Custody

Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil (L) spent 104 days in federal detention after being targeted by the Trump administration for deportation. kena betancur / AFP
Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil (L) spent 104 days in federal detention after being targeted by the Trump administration for deportation. kena betancur / AFP
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Pro-Palestinian Protest Leader Details 104 Days Spent in US Custody

Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil (L) spent 104 days in federal detention after being targeted by the Trump administration for deportation. kena betancur / AFP
Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil (L) spent 104 days in federal detention after being targeted by the Trump administration for deportation. kena betancur / AFP

Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses, recounted his experience surviving 104 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention after being targeted for deportation by the Trump administration.

"I shared a dorm with over 70 men, absolutely no privacy, lights on all the time," the 30-year-old said Sunday on the steps of Columbia University, where he was a graduate student, AFP reported.

Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to an American citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential removal proceedings.

He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Jena, Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.

The activist was a figurehead of student protests at Columbia University against US ally Israel's war in Gaza, and the administration of Donald Trump labeled him a national security threat.

"It's so normal in detention to see men cry," Khalil recalled, deeming the situation "horrendous" and "a stain on the US Constitution."

"I spent my days listening to one tragic story after another: listening to a father of four whose wife is battling cancer, and he's in detention," Khalil detailed in his first protest appearance since regaining his freedom.

"I listened to a story of an individual who has been in the United States for over 20 years, all his children are American, yet he's deported."

The circumstances of the detention were tough, Khalil described, and he took solace where he could find it to gain the strength to carry on.

'We will win'

"It is often hard to find patience in ICE detention," Khalil said.

"The center is crowded with hundreds of people who are told that their existence is illegal, and not one of us knows when we can go free.

"At those moments, it was remembering a specific chant that gave me strength : 'I believe that we will win,'" he continued, to cheers from the audience.

Khalil said he even scratched the phrase into his detention center bunk bed as a reminder, being the last thing he saw when he went to sleep and the first thing he read waking up in the morning.

He repeats it even now, "knowing that I have won in a small way by being free today."

Khalil took specific aim at the site of his speech, Columbia University, chastising the institution for saying "that they want to protect their international students, while over 100 (days) later, I haven't received a single call from this university."

Khalil's wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to their son while her husband was held by ICE, said his "voice is stronger now than it has ever been."

"One day our son will know that his father did not bow to fear. He will know that his father stood up when it was hardest, and that the world stood with him," Abdalla said.