Iran has been establishing signals intelligence stations in several parts of the Middle East, including the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, the U.S.-based World Tribune reports.
The Defense Department has indicated that one of the intelligence stations was established in the Golan Heights, close to Syria’s border with Israel, the report said.
The Pentagon’s counter-terrorist support office said the stations were established by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps together with Tehran’s leading ally, Syria, according to the World Tribune.
“Two Iranian-Syrian [signals intelligence] stations funded by the IRGC reportedly have been active since 2006, one in the Al Jazirah region in northern Syria and the other on the Golan Heights,” said the report, entitled “Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security: A Profile.”
The report, issued last month and prepared by the Library of Congress, said IRGC was planning to establish additional listening stations for northern Syria. The stations were meant to supply information on Israel to Hizbullah, Iran’s leading terror proxy.
The ongoing civil war in Syria has spilled over several times into Israel from the Golan Heights. The incidents have included mortar shells landing in the religious Zionist town of Alonei Habashan, which is less than a kilometer from the border, as well as IDF vehicles being hit by bullets fired from Syrian territory into Israel during the fighting between the sides.
The IDF changed the rules of engagement along the Syrian border after the fighting in Syria spilled over into Israel more than once.
The new orders instruct soldiers to respond if fire from Syria is dangerous and persistent.
Israel has also been monitoring Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile, which dates back to the 1970s, is the biggest in the Middle East, but its precise scope remains unclear, according to analysts.
The country has hundreds of tons of various chemical agents, including sarin and VX nerve agents, as well as older blistering agents such as mustard gas, dispersed in dozens of manufacturing and storage sites, experts say.
U.S. officials recently said there was evidence that Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad’s troops had not only moved deadly sarin gas that might be used against rebels, but also that its binary components, usually stored separately, had been combined and placed into bombs for use.
Doctors have said that Assad’s forces are probably also using “Agent 15,” which causes paralysis.
The United States and its allies, including Israel, have repeatedly expressed concern that Syria’s stockpile, believed to be one of the biggest in the world, could be stolen and fall into extremist hands or be transferred to the Hizbullah terror group by a crumbling Syrian regime.
