About Iran’s Bombproof Missile Facility in Syria..
Israeli CH-53K
Israel’s Commando Strike on a ‘Bombproof’ Missile Factory Tells Tehran, ‘You Can Run but You Can’t Hide’
A daring Israeli commando raid deep into Bashar Assad’s Syria in early September not only destroyed an Iranian factory producing missiles for Hezbollah to shoot into Israel, it may have been a test of a concept that puts all of Iran’s nuclear facilities at risk.
On the night of September 8-9, a 120-man unit of elite Israeli Air Force Shaldag commandos in CH-53 attacked the underground factory in the Masyaf area of Syria, west of Hama, using a combination of landing and fast roping.
The site lies more than 125 miles north of the Israeli border and some 30 miles from Syria’s western coastline. The CH-53s flew in from the Mediterranean to evade Syria’s air defense system; as the CH-53 has a range of about 430 miles, aerial refueling was required.
Because the last Iranian missile factory in Syria was smashed flat by an Israeli airstrike in 2017, the Iranians built this one to be bombproof.
The missile factory, codenamed by Israel “Deep Layer,” was dug into a mountain at the Scientific Studies and Research Center in the Masyaf area of Syria. Iran began planning the underground facility in 2017 after an Israeli airstrike took out a rocket engine manufacturing facility there. The site that Iran subsequently constructed was buried up to 430 feet underground and considered impossible to destroy from the air. The IDF said it had intelligence on the facility from the moment construction began.
The implications are plain- many of Iran’s nuclear facilities are also underground.
Category: Iran, Israel, Middle East
