Explosives Trafficking: Hezbollah Persists… and Confirms

Lebanon's pro-Iranian Hezbollah party acknowledged Thursday, through its lawmaker Hassan Fadlallah, that the half-ton shipment of explosives seized last week by Lebanese authorities belonged to it, saying the explosives were intended for the “resistance” against Israel…

Fadlallah added that Hezbollah had demanded “the immediate release of those detained” and “the return of the vehicle and its contents,” because these were “capabilities” the party uses against Israel.

While such an admission is rare in itself, it also represents a fresh challenge to the Lebanese state, which is mobilizing its forces to end the presence of armed organizations beyond its control. In the name of “resistance” to Israel, Hezbollah has dragged the country into several destructive wars with Israel and opposes the authorities' decision to disarm it.

The explosives were seized at the Dahr al-Baidar pass, on the road linking the country's east, which borders Syria, to Beirut. Prime Minister Nawaf Salam had said the state would no longer tolerate “illegal weapons.”

The seized vehicle was carrying 250 kg of TNT and 250 kg of C-4, a particularly powerful plastic explosive.

Salam had added that his government “would show the necessary resolve in dealing with all weapons beyond the control” of the authorities, stressing that he understood “the Lebanese people's concern,” especially since “C-4 has been used in several notorious political assassinations in Lebanon's recent history.”

The prime minister had said the authorities would “identify everyone involved in this criminal operation and those who ordered it.”

Fadlallah was quick to respond to Salam's remarks, saying that “the prime minister's rush to portray the events as preparations for assassinations amounts to a campaign to sow discord and deepen divisions among the Lebanese”!

“The resistance, with all its weapons, is directed exclusively against the Israeli enemy,” he asserted.

It is worth recalling that Hezbollah has been accused of involvement in several political assassinations in Lebanon. An international tribunal convicted several members of the pro-Iranian party for their role in the 2005 assassination of former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri using a massive explosive charge.

What was the intended use?

The seizure of the explosives also raises several questions. Could Hezbollah be running out of local supplies and therefore be forced to replenish them, with all the risks transporting explosives entails for the militia?

These explosives could be used either to manufacture weapons such as rockets and mines, even though the militia is supposed to have stockpiles of such weapons, or to prepare bomb attacks…

On that last point, C-4, a plastic explosive composed primarily of RDX, is manufactured in the United States and several other countries.

Several sources document the manufacture of C-4 in Iran and its presence in arms shipments destined for armed groups in the region.

A report submitted to the U.S. Congress in 2007 explicitly states that variants of C-4 are manufactured in Iran, as well as in the United States and other countries.

In February 2007, U.S. officers said they had discovered Iranian-made C-4 explosives alongside other military equipment in the Hilla area, south of Baghdad.

These discoveries came amid U.S. accusations that Tehran was supporting Iraqi Shiite militias, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Traceability

Another report, published in 2020 by the Atlantic Council on illicit Iranian arms transfers in the Gulf, presents particularly interesting physical evidence.

The report describes blocks of C-4 found in Bahrain in packaging matching that of Iranian-made M112 C-4. Some bore batch markings dated 2006 and 2010. Identical packaging had been found in a shipment intercepted in Yemen.

Nevertheless, this type of explosive can be chemically analyzed, while examining any markings or packaging could provide clues to its origin.

Before C-4 drew attention in several regional cases, another plastic explosive, Czechoslovak-made Semtex, had gained a sinister reputation for its use by terrorist organizations during the Cold War.

Manufactured in Czechoslovakia, the explosive was exported to countries including Libya, where Colonel Gaddafi's regime reportedly acquired nearly 1,000 tonnes, according to revelations made in 1990 by Czechoslovak President Václav Havel.

Some of these stockpiles were subsequently transferred to armed organizations, notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA).

The Lockerbie bombing, carried out on December 21, 1988, against a Pan Am aircraft over Scotland, remains one of the most notorious examples of the use of Semtex in international terrorism.

More broadly, during the Cold War, the Soviet Union and several Eastern Bloc countries provided military support to various armed organizations, including Palestinian movements such as the PLO and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

Other organizations, such as Germany's Red Army Faction (the Baader-Meinhof gang), received support in certain communist-bloc countries.

However, although some authors have reported supplies of this explosive, not all of these relationships necessarily involved documented deliveries of Semtex.

Porous border

In early October, the Lebanese army announced that it had seized nearly 250 kg of explosives, along with “four explosive devices, eight detonators and electrical wiring specifically for detonators,” smuggled into Lebanon from neighboring Syria. It was unable, however, to arrest the smugglers.

Lebanon and Syria share a 330-km border known for its porousness. Since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria in late 2024, Lebanese and Syrian authorities have been working to combat overland smuggling along the border, particularly trafficking in weapons and Captagon.

Syria's new authorities have repeatedly asserted that Hezbollah cells remain active in Syria, while other routes could allow weapons to be brought in from Iraq, where Iran has several affiliated armed groups.