Hezbollah has gained control of armored vehicles, taken from the Lebanese army, which had received them from the US.
A senior officer in the IDF confirmed that the Lebanon-based Hezbollah terror group is using American-made military equipment.
“These APCs (armored personnel carriers) belong to Hezbollah [forces] – while fighting in Syria, they took from the Lebanese armed forces,” the unnamed IDF officer said Wednesday, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“We shared this information with other countries, including the US of course, and I can even say that we recognized these specific APCs with some specific parameters that we know…these were given to the Lebanese armed forces. It’s not an assumption,” the officer added.
Last month, Hezbollah held its first-ever military parade in Syria, showcasing a wide array of equipment including Soviet-made T-72 tanks, Russian Kornet anti-tank missiles, rapid response motorcycles, KS-12A anti-aircraft weapons, and, most notably, American-made M113 APCs.
After the parade, US officials said they were investigating how Hezbollah came to possess the American APCs, with reports suggesting the carriers may have come from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), which received several dozen pieces of US equipment last summer as part of a military aid package.
According to the US Congressional Research Service, Congress has appropriated more than $1 billion in assistance to Lebanon since the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006.
It is unclear if the APC’s were donated or taken by force.
US experts say the cross-border transfers of US-origin equipment from the LAF to Hezbollah is clearly illegal, Defense News reported.
“If these APCs came from the LAF, it’s a violation of US law. It doesn’t really matter if they were willfully provided or if Hezbollah took these across the border,” said Lee Smith, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute.
“What’s important is the sovereign government in Beirut didn’t stop them. It means either they can’t protect their territory and defend their borders or – even worse – they are facilitating Hezbollah’s war in Syria,” Smith said.
The possibility of American weapons ending up in the hands of its enemies is not a new concern.
“Intervention when both sides are evil is a mistake. Intervention that destabilizes the region is a mistake … the inescapable irony is that someday the arms we supply would be used against us, or Israel,” Senator Rand Paul warned already in a 2014 editorial.
By: JNS.org and World Israel News Staff