Officials say Iran is smuggling arms to the West Bank

Weapons for Palestinians in bid to poke Israel

Iran is operating a clandestine smuggling route across the Middle East, employing intelligence operatives, militants, and criminal gangs, to deliver weapons to Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, according to officials from the United States, Israel, and Iran.

The goal, as described by three Iranian officials, is to foment unrest against Israel by flooding the enclave with as many weapons as it can.

The covert operation is heightening concerns that Iran is seeking to turn the West Bank into the next flashpoint in the long-simmering shadow war between Israel and Iran. That conflict has taken on new urgency this month, risking a broader conflict in the Middle East, as Iran vowed to retaliate for an Israeli strike on an embassy compound that killed seven Iranian commanders.

Many weapons smuggled to the West Bank largely travel along two paths from Iran through Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel, the officials said. As the arms cross borders, the officials added, they change hands among a multinational cast that can include members of organized criminal gangs, extremist militants, soldiers, and intelligence operatives. A key group in the operation, the Iranian officials and analysts said, are Bedouin smugglers who carry the weapons across the border from Jordan into Israel.

The New York Times interviewed senior security and government officials with knowledge of Iran’s effort to smuggle weapons to the West Bank, including three from Israel, three from Iran, and three from the United States. The officials from all three countries requested anonymity to discuss covert operations for which they were not authorized to speak publicly.

“The Iranians wanted to flood the West Bank with weapons, and they were using criminal networks in Jordan, in the West Bank and in Israel, primarily Bedouin, to move and sell the products,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the counterterrorism program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research organization, and the author of a study on the smuggling route.

The smuggling to the West Bank, analysts said, began about two years ago when Iran started using routes previously established to smuggle other contraband. It is unclear exactly how many weapons have made it to the territory in that time, though analysts say the majority are small arms.

In the months since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel from the Gaza Strip, Israeli security forces have conducted a large-scale crackdown across the West Bank. The Israeli military describes the raids as part of its counterterrorism effort against Hamas and other armed factions to root out weapons and militants. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, including those accused of attacking Israelis, according to the United Nations.

For years, Iran’s leaders have declared the necessity of arming Palestinian fighters in the occupied West Bank. Iran has long supplied weapons for attacking Israel to militants elsewhere in the region, members of its so-called Axis of Resistance, including its two primary Palestinian allies in Gaza, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

In a statement, Iran’s UN Mission did not comment on the smuggling operation, but emphasized what it said was the importance of Palestinians taking up arms against Israel.

“Iran’s assessment posits that the sole effective avenue for resisting the occupation by the Zionist regime is through armed resistance,” said Amir Saeid Iravani, the country’s UN ambassador.