U.S. Assails Iran for Alleged Hezbollah Arms Shipments

WASHINGTON —  The Clinton administration denounced Iran on Thursday for escalating arms shipments to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon and charged that Tehran is trying to thwart the efforts of Secretary of State Warren Christopher as he shuttles around the Mideast in search of a cease-fire.

The third planeload of supplies in 10 days arrived in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Tuesday, according to senior U.S. officials. The Iranian 747 contained crates of arms, including the Katyusha rockets that are among the weapons Hezbollah guerrillas continue to fire across the Lebanese border into northern Israel.

Iran’s cargo planes are landing at Damascus International Airport, the same airport where the blue-and-white U.S. Air Force plane carrying Christopher and his staff lands on his shuttle diplomacy stops.

Syria is the dominant military power in Lebanon and has 35,000 troops stationed there.

In a telephone interview Thursday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif called the report of the weapons shipments “a baseless allegation. We have increased our humanitarian aid to Lebanon after the recent Israeli aggression because of the increasing need of people for assistance and because they have been displaced.” Zarif was in New York for a debate on Lebanon at the United Nations.

But a senior U.S. official claimed Thursday that Tehran is not only pumping up assistance to its Lebanese allies and trying to undermine the peace process, but also is attempting to see to it that Christopher, the most outspoken U.S. official critical of Iran, experiences “pain, agony, embarrassment and failure” as he seeks a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah.

From Tehran’s perspective, the heightened conflict between Israel and Lebanon has offered a rare opportunity to exert some control in an area from which it has increasingly been excluded, U.S. officials say.

Hezbollah fighters were at a training camp outside Tehran in March, U.S. officials say, and Pentagon sources suspect the training was in preparation for new attacks. In the past, Hezbollah fighters have been trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, which abuts the Syrian border.

Keeping Hezbollah trained and supplied with Katyushas and other weapons allows Iran’s allies to maintain pressure on Israel as well as on other parties involved in one of the Mideast’s most volatile spots. U.N. military observers in Lebanon say 1,100 Katyushas have been fired at Israel over the past two weeks, and there is no indication that Hezbollah faces any imminent weapons shortage--or any reason to agree to a cease-fire, U.S. officials say.

The most recent flights of weapons, which began April 13, reflect a thaw in what had become chilly relations between Iran and Syria. During the winter, the height of a renewed round of peace negotiations, Syria deliberately slowed the pace of arms shipments. Ties became so rocky that Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati canceled a scheduled visit.

Syrian President Hafez Assad “played games with the resupply and support from Iran to get greater control over the militia, which is seen as the wild card in the peace process,” another U.S. official said. “So open tension developed with Iran.”

“Now he has decided that this [resupply] operation can be useful to his goals and that it’s advantageous to cooperate with Iran,” the official said. Velayati visited Damascus this month.

The U.S. condemnation follows the announcement Thursday in Iran that the United States has paid $61.8 million in compensation for the 1988 shooting down of an Iran Air passenger plane over the Persian Gulf that killed all 290 on board. The money was deposited into a Swiss bank and will go directly to families of the victims.