Iran Opens New Front Against Israel
The Israeli security agency Shin Bet recently foiled an attempt by Iran to smuggle large amounts of advanced weapons to Palestinian terrorists in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank) to be used in attacks against targets in Israel. The smuggling operation demonstrates that Iran, after losing its proxies in Lebanon and Syria, is intensifying its efforts to open a new eastern terror front against Israel inside the West Bank by exploiting Israel’s long and porous border with Jordan.
A joint Shin Bet–Israel Defense Forces (IDF) statement said the agencies intercepted a shipment of Iranian weapons, including rocket launchers, anti-tank rockets, explosive-laden drones, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, assault rifles, handguns, and other items. The plot to smuggle “balance-altering” weapons into the West Bank was organized by Iran’s Unit 4000, a special operations division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Unit 18840, an IRGC special operations unit in Syria.
The Israeli counterintelligence operation began when the IDF arrested an arms dealer in the Ramallah area of the West Bank. The Shin Bet said its interrogation of the dealer led the security agency to the smugglers and subsequently to the shipment itself. Similar operations had already been foiled in March and November 2024. It’s entirely possible that large quantities of Iranian weapons are flooding into the West Bank undetected by Israeli security agencies.
“This shipment, like its predecessors, is part of an ongoing Iranian effort to undermine security in the region by arming terror cells on the ground whose purpose is to carry out attacks against Israelis and IDF troops,” the Shin Bet said in a statement.
Iran began boosting its weapons-smuggling efforts in the West Bank after Hamas terrorist cells there failed to carry out attacks on Israel in the immediate aftermath of the terror group’s massacre of Israelis in October 2023. Tehran now seeks to flood the West Bank with Iranian weapons transshipped through Jordan to undermine Israeli security.
After Jordan (which signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1994) increased the number of troops deployed along its border with Israel to prevent the smuggling of Iranian weapons, Iran intensified its efforts to destabilize the Jordanian monarchy. In May 2024, Jordan foiled an Iranian plot to smuggle weapons into the kingdom to help a Hamas-allied Muslim Brotherhood cell there to carry out acts of sabotage against the ruling monarchy.
Meanwhile, Israel is building a state-of-the-art fence along its border with Jordan to prevent Iranian infiltration and weapons smuggling. The project, which will cost around $1.5 billion and take three years to complete, will stretch approximately 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the Golan Heights south to Eilat.
Middle East analyst Joe Truzman warned that although Iranian efforts to arm Palestinian terrorist groups in the West Bank are nothing new, the nature of the weapons now being smuggled is deeply troubling. “Tehran is not only sending rifles and pistols; it is attempting to move advanced, destabilizing systems that could transform the security landscape in the territory,” he said. “These are game-changing weapons capable of inflicting mass casualties against IDF troops or civilians. The Israeli security establishment has every reason to view Iran’s renewed efforts to destabilize the West Bank with serious concern.”
Another Middle East expert, Seth Frantzman, applauded Israel’s foiling of Iran’s plot to smuggle weapons into the West Bank as an important achievement. “Iran has used this model in Gaza and Lebanon,” he said. “It is now trying to inflame the West Bank.”
