Israeli TV: Iran Building Missile Factory in Syria

According to a report from Israel’s Channel 2 news released Tuesday, Iran is building a facility in northwestern Syria – near the town of Baniyas – capable of producing long-range rockets. The report showed satellite photos of the installation under construction, and claimed that elements of the site’s design suggest it will store military-grade high explosives. It also highlighted the similarity of the images to a rocket-manufacturing facility near Tehran.

The Cipher Take:

This report underlines the swiftly growing threat along Israel’s border represented by both Syria and Lebanon. Some have posited a theory that the Syrian civil war could be a positive for Israel’s security, pitting the country’s enemies – Iran, its proxies, and Sunni jihadist groups – against each other. However, as the ISIS threat slowly recedes and the Syrian government continues to solidify its position, that concept now looks far-fetched. Iran and its proxies have nearly completed a stable land bridge to the Mediterranean through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. In addition to thousands of troops and material stationed in Syria, the Islamic Republic also has an increasingly powerful military ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, which currently sits on an arsenal of some 150,000 rockets capable of reaching anywhere in Israel.