Iran Turns Beirut Airport into Human Shield for Prospective War

Airport workers: We don’t want to die.

Lebanon’s Beirut–Rafic Hariri International Airport. (NASA)

Whistleblowers from Beirut’s main airport have told The Telegraph that Hizballah has been stockpiling deadly weapons there.

One of the airport workers said: “If they keep bringing in these goods I’m not allowed to check, I really believe I’ll die from the explosion or I’ll die from Israel bombing ‘the goods.’ It’s not just us, it’s the ordinary people, the people coming in and out, going on holiday. If the airport is bombed, Lebanon is finished.”

The linked-to article says the Lebanese air transport association has denied the weapons are being stored at the airport. The denials are obviously Hizballah-generated and not credible. The complaints by several airport workers—and “intelligence sources”—are clearly credible.

Lebanese transport minister Ali Hamieh called the allegations “ridiculous” and invited journalists and ambassadors to come view the airport. Problem is, Hamieh is tied to Hizballah, having been nominated to the government by the terror group. Journalists or ambassadors gullible enough to take him up on the offer, if any, will obviously not be shown the incriminating evidence. (Update: A tour conducted by the transport minister on Monday “was cut short after journalists were denied access to the air cargo center.”)

Airport workers, The Telegraph reports,

claimed that they had observed “unusually big boxes” arriving and the increased presence of high level Hezbollah commanders.

. . . Staff at the airport and intelligence sources claimed in interviews with The Telegraph that weapons were travelling through the airport and being stored on site.

The cache allegedly includes Iranian-made Falaq unguided artillery rockets, Fateh-110 short-range missiles, road-mobile ballistic missiles and M-600 missiles with ranges of 150 to 200 miles.

Also at the airport it is claimed that there are AT-14 Kornets, laser-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), huge quantities of Burkan short-range ballistic missiles and explosive RDX, a toxic white powder also known as cyclonite or hexogen.

The whistleblowers are especially alarmed because they recall the enormous explosion of ammonium nitrate at the Beirut port on August 4, 2020, which killed 218 people, injured 7,000, caused billions of dollars of property damage—and occurred at a Hizballah weapons-storage site. An investigation of the disaster has limped along and gotten nowhere for four years—effectively blocked by Hizballah, the effective totalitarian government of Lebanon.

Airport staff also say that top Hizballah official Wafiq Safa

has become a notoriously conspicuous figure at the airport.

“Wafiq Safa is always showing up at customs,” one whistleblower claimed, citing close relationships with the customs managers. “I feel like if we don’t do what they say, our families will be in danger.”

In a city battered economically since 2019, the whistleblower claims workers collaborating with Hezbollah “walk around like peacocks” with new watches and smartphones, and drive new cars. “A lot of money [is] being passed under the table,” he added.

The Israel Defense Forces clearly got wind of the original Telegraph report, and put out this statement:

Hezbollah’s strategy to hide weapons and operate from civilian neighbourhoods stems from its intentions to draw the IDF to target these civilian areas in times of escalation.

If Hezbollah were to target Israeli civilians from these sites, the IDF would have no choice but to react, potentially placing Lebanese civilians in harm’s way, causing international outrage toward the IDF.

So that answers the question: Why use an airport to store weapons, not just transport them? Imagine the headline: “Israel Bombs Beirut Airport, Killing Hundreds”—or maybe, in explosions, thousands. Who would get blamed—Hizballah or Israel?

Whether a larger-scale Israel–Hizballah war will break out at this point is still unknown. Hizballah and its patron Iran, however, are well aware of how well the human-shields strategy has served Hamas in Gaza—getting Israel charged with “genocide” in the International Court of Justice, getting arrest warrants issued for its prime minister and defense minister by the International Criminal Court, incurring huge pressures not just from hostile entities but also from friendlier ones including the US administration itself.

In a better world, far more people would take heed of the deadly cynicism of Israel’s enemies and not blame Israel for doing what it has, when the chips are down, no choice but to do.

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