Israel Neutralizes Hezbollah's Anti-Ship Missile Capability

On the evening of September 27, Israel interrupted a senior command meeting with a massive attack on the Hezbollah headquarters complex in Haret Hreik district of southern Beirut, which killed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, and Ali Karaki, the commander of Hezbollah operations on Lebanon’s southern border. Also killed was Brigadier Abbas Nilforushan, the IRGC Qods Force deputy commander, who since April and the death in Damascus of Brigadier Mohammad Reza Zahedi, had been the senior Iranian commander in the Levant, and a permanent member of Hezbollah’s governing Shura Council.

Immediately following this attack, suggesting that this was a high priority, Israel issued evacuation warnings to civilians in the nearby neighborhoods of Hadath and Laylaki, and proceeded to attack three sites which it claimed garaged mobile anti-shipping missiles. Social media phone footage of the attack in Laylaki showed secondary explosions, indicating that ammunition had been stored in the location.

Israel has had a particular concern with Hezbollah’s anti-shipping missile capability since 2006, when the Israeli Navy’s INS Hanit was hit in a missile strike and four sailors killed - a rare demonstration of vulnerability and evidence that counter-measures on board INS Hanit were ineffective.

Hezbollah is known to have been supplied with Chinese-built Chinese C-704 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, with which Western navies are familiar, particularly as the C-802 was originally a reverse-engineered version of the Exocet.  But like the Houthis, Hezbollah is also believed to have been supplied with Iranian-built Ghadir missiles, an Iranian development of the C-802, with an enhanced range out to 300 kilometers.  The Ghadir is a sea-skimmer, and therefore difficult to detect. Its guidance system probably features an inertial system for the early flight phase (not subject to electronic detection), with a radar homing system activated when within closing range of the target.

The Ghadir operating mode therefore gives little time for a ship to detect the threat and then activate a response.  Moreover, with a range of 300 kilometers, the missile poses a threat to much of Israel’s Mediterranean coast, to British bases in Cyprus, and to the intervening seaspace. It also can be brought very quickly into action; from garaging in Hadath and Laylaki, mobile launchers could be in pre-prepared firing positions on the high ground in Baabda within minutes, and quickly into action. 

The speed with which Israel moved on from decapitating Hezbollah’s senior command to neutralizing its anti-shipping capability is an indication of the high priority accorded to its destruction.  The Israeli strike pre-empted any move to protect the mobile launchers by shifting them to fresh, unknown locations, and also the use of this capability in reprisal attacks - which Hezbollah, in the light of recent reverses, would be keen to mount.  The pre-emptive action protects a large variety of shipping targets, and it prevents the creation of another danger area of the type that the Houthis have been able to impose over the Red Sea.