Hezbollah Uses Beirut Airport as its Own Private Military Air Base

If the war between Hezbollah and Israel escalates, Beirut's Rafik Hariri Airport will be a first target.

Back in 1968, when the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) attacked the Israeli Airliner El Al Flight 253, Israel retaliated by raiding Beiut Airport and destroying 14 civilian and cargo airplanes belonging to the Lebanese national carriers, Middle East Airlines (MEA) Lebanese International Airways (LIA) and Trans Mediterranean Airways (TMA).

In the aftermath of the raid, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 262, which condemned Israel for the "premeditated military action in violation of its obligations under the Charter and the cease-fire resolutions", issued a "solemn warning to Israel that if such acts were to be repeated, the Council would have to consider further steps to give effect to its decisions", and stated that Lebanon was entitled to appropriate redress. The resolution was adopted unanimously. The raid resulted in a sharp rebuke from the United States, which stated that nothing suggested that the Lebanese authorities had anything to do with the El Al Flight 253 attack. But blind revenge has always been a staple of Israeli "defense" just as it is doing in Gaza today.

But today, Hezbollah is the Lebanese authorities, while official government actors are mere puppets and figureheads. There is no president (Hezbollah has scuttled elections of a new president); the government is an acting government that had resigned long time ago; and the parliament is mostly made up of stooges of the main political parties. The only real opposition to Hezbollah's hijacking of the state and to the Iranian occupation-by-proxy comes from the majority of Christian parties and some Sunni politicians, most of whom are not in government. Any serious dissidence against Hezbollah (journalists, politicians, etc.) is routinely repressed with assassinations with complete impunity.

Whereas in past wars (e.g. 2006), Israel attacked those infrastructure elements that supplied Hezbollah but did not target official Lebanese state institutional buildings or army barracks, the fact that Hezbollah is today the de facto government of Lebanon gives Israel the justification to attack anything and everywhere in Lebanon, including ministries, army bases, infrastructure, power plants, etc.

Beirut Airport is the only civilian airport operating in the tiny country. Since that 1968 raid, the airport has always been immediately targeted (e.g. in 2006) when combats expanded beyond south Lebanon where they are usually confined.

With tensions building up between Hezbollah and Israel on account of the war in Gaza, everyone knows that Hezbollah receives weapons through the airport from Iran. There is no doubt that the ineffectual Lebanese government is a reluctant accomplice in Hezbollah's misuse of the airport. For more than five decades, the Lebanese government was forced by the Arab League and others to surrender its sovereignty and allow a variety of armed groups and organizations freedom of action on its soil, supposedly to "liberate Palestine". The Lebanese army has been absent from the borders of the country and is no more than a glorified police force that the treacherous US keeps pretending to be supporting with second hand useless equipment and lots of pity and compassion.

But now there are claims that Hezbollah's weapons are not only transiting through the airport; they are also being stored there. Perhaps Hezbollah is running out of space elsewhere, or it stupidly believes that Israel is somehow "ethical" and will refrain from bombing civilian targets like the airport. Lebanese stooge officials of course deny, but whistleblowers have been reporting unsual activity at the airport, including direct unauthorized flights from Iran carrying “unusually big boxes” arriving and the increased presence of high level Hezbollah commanders like Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s second in command.

Ali Hamieh, the Hezbollah-appointed transport minister, denied the accusations as “ridiculous".

The airport cache is believed to include Iranian-made Falaq unguided artillery rockets, Fateh-110 short-range missiles, road-mobile ballistic missiles and M-600 missiles with ranges of 150 to 200 miles, AT-14 Kornets, laser-guided anti-tank guided missiles (ATGM), huge quantities of Burkan short-range ballistic missiles and explosive RDX, a toxic white powder also known as cyclonite or hexogen.

One airport worker, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “This is extremely serious; mysterious large boxes arriving on direct flights from Iran are a sign that things got worse.” In November, “unusually big boxes” arrived on a direct flight from Iran. “This doesn’t happen often, but it did happen exactly when everyone in Lebanon was talking about the possibility of war,” the worker added, "they keep bringing in these goods that I’m not allowed to inspect".

Hezbollah leaders have previously come under Western sanctions for smuggling through the airport. Despite sanctions, staff at the airport claim Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah’s second in command and the head of its security apparatus, has become a notoriously conspicuous figure at the airport.

“Wafiq Safa is always showing up at customs,” one whistleblower claimed, citing close relationships with the customs managers. “I feel like if we don’t do what they say, our families will be in danger.”

In a city battered economically since 2019, the whistleblower claims workers collaborating with Hezbollah “walk around like peacocks” with new watches and smartphones, and drive new cars. “A lot of money [is] being passed under the table,” he added.


Wafiq Safa, Hezbollah's second-in-command and head of its security apparatus, looking satisfied as he runs Lebanon from behind his boss Hassan Nasrallah. Like all Shiite slaves of Iran, they all have beards and refuse to wear "western" ties.

It is no secret that Hezbollah controls the entire area surrounding the airport. Travelers in and out of the airport have to go through this area where many hostage takings and kidnappings have taken place since the early 1970s. Christians in Lebanon have long demanded that the unfinished airport at Hamat, north of Beirut and outside any possible control by Hezbollah, be rendered operational. Hamat, though, is routinely used by the US for its own covert flights in and out of Lebanon in order to prevent any attacks by Hezbollah against US assets. In October 1983, Hezbollah truck-bombed the US Marines Headquarters located just outside Beirut Airport, killing 241 US Marines and Servicemen.

Ghassan Hasbani, the former deputy prime minister and an MP for the Christian Lebanese Forces party, said Hezbollah’s control of the airport has long been a concern for Lebanon and more so now if it increasingly becomes a potential military target in the conflict with Israel. “The area all around the airport is controlled by Hezbollah, so many people are concerned about passage through the airport of Beirut, which is why many Gulf countries have at times imposed bans on their citizens travelling there,” he said.

Taking action is all but impossible without international intervention to implement relevant UN resolutions, he said. “The entrenchment of Hezbollah is everywhere, not only in the airport but in the port, the judiciary, it’s across society ... the public administration now is largely hijacked by Hezbollah and it’s very difficult to remove that without changing the militia-backed power game that exists today.”

A security source at a major international aviation body said, “We have been aware of this for years, but we are unable to do anything without international legal action. We are hand-tied to do what we’d really like, which is to close the airport and have all the weapons and explosives removed.”