The Lebanese government has a choice to make — reclaim effective control of its main international airport from Hezbollah, or see that air hub destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces. As government ministers in Beirut ponder their decision, Washington can help.

For the past year, Beirut’s Rafic Hariri international airport has been the main gateway for Iran’s resupply of weapons to Hezbollah, its terror proxy in Lebanon. Hezbollah’s full control of the airport has allowed Iran to easily resupply its allies there.

But not anymore.

Hours after Israel’s successful elimination of Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on September 28, an Iranian cargo plane left Tehran’s international airport for Beirut. But upon entering Lebanon’s airspace, the control tower — under threat of Israeli kinetic action — denied landing permission to the aircraft, which turned around and headed back to Iran.

Data obtained from an open source — commercial flight tracker FlightRadar24 — show that subsequent Iranian flights, on October 1, October 5 and October 7, also failed to reach Beirut, also reportedly due to Israeli interdiction.

The Israeli Air Force has closed the Tehran-Beirut air resupply route: Iranian cargo has now been diverted to Latakia, Syria, with weapons then continuing by truck to Lebanon through border crossings that Israel’s air force has also been targeting.

 For Israel, blocking the flow of Iranian weapons into Lebanon is essential to preventing Hezbollah from reconstituting its arsenal. But the cat-and-mouse game in the skies of the Levant is not a long-term solution, as long as Hezbollah controls Lebanon’s only civilian, commercial, international airport.

Breaking Hezbollah’s grip on the relevant arms of the Lebanese government is the only way to ensure Iran can no longer replenish Hezbollah’s arsenal.

Previously, Israel’s air interdiction had focused on Syria, which for years had been the key destination for Iranian weapons deliveries. Israeli precision strikes on Syrian runways and weapons warehouses led to the Iranian shift toward Beirut — especially after October 7, 2023, when Hezbollah joined Hamas in its onslaught against Israel’s civilian population.

The Iranian carrier Mahan Air — which the US Department of the Treasury has repeatedly sanctioned for transporting weapons, militias, and illicit procurement on Iran’s behalf — began flying into Beirut at least weekly.

With hostilities escalating from cross-border exchanges into a full-fledged conflict, Mahan flights have stopped going to Beirut, but continue to head into Latakia, Syria, alongside other carriers, including a cargo Boeing 747 operated by Fars Air Qeshm, a US sanctioned Iranian regime proxy of Mahan Air, previously involved, on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force, in the transfer of weaponry to Syria and other destinations — including, reportedly, Ethiopia, Myanmar, and Sudan — since 2017. 

With Israel methodically hitting Hezbollah’s hidden weapons caches across Lebanon, the only way Iran can ensure Hezbollah can live to fight another day is to resume these deliveries. That is why, despite international airlines having cancelled all flights to Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International airport, Iranian carriers are scrambling to make it there.

Despite the trappings of state institutions formally running Lebanon’s transport and travel infrastructure — airports and ports authorities, airport security, customs, and a ministry of public transports — Hezbollah officials control or have heavily infiltrated them, thereby enabling Hezbollah’s activities rather than preventing them.

For years now, Hezbollah has suborned the airport to its needs: Drug shipments from Latin America go unchecked through security and customs, before they reach lucrative Middle East markets in exchange for a fee paid to the Hezbollah officials who clear the illicit merchandise. And weapons shipments have come in regularly from Iran, before being offloaded and stored nearby.

Hezbollah’s continuing grip on Beirut’s airport will sooner or later make the airport a target for Israeli action. 

Washington and its allies can help remedy this situation.

First, Hezbollah officials implicated in turning Lebanon’s points of entry into smuggling machines should be sanctioned. Under President Trump, the US Department of the Treasury targeted Wafiq Safa, the man in charge of security at Beirut’s airport.

According to Treasury, Safa — the head of Hezbollah’s security apparatus — “exploited Lebanon’s ports and border crossings to smuggle contraband and facilitate travel on behalf of Hizballah, undermining the security and safety of the Lebanese people, while also draining valuable import duties and revenue away from the Lebanese government.” But that was five years ago. More pressure is needed, including on the Hezbollah-backed minister of public transports, Ali Hamieh.

The European Union spent 3.5 million euro to bolster Beirut’s airport security in 2020, and recently pledged another billion euro to help Lebanon’s fledgling economy and strengthen state institutions, including the improvement of border management and security — all after Lebanon’s airport chief had been sanctioned by the US.

Holding the Lebanese government responsible for failing to use European taxpayer funds for the purposes for which they were earmarked should become a first priority, making any future security aid conditional on removing any Hezbollah officials from the public transport and infrastructure sector.

Lebanon is at a crossroads. If its government can be convinced to degrade Hezbollah infiltration of its government institutions, such as its international airport, it stands a chance to get back on its feet. The alternative is that, having relinquished control over its international border crossings to Hezbollah and Iran, it will risk losing its only gateway to the world to IDF action. That would be a tragedy for Lebanon — but an inevitable casualty of a conflict for which Lebanon’s authorities have only themselves to blame.

 Emanuele Ottolenghi is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute in Washington, DC, focusing on foreign policy and national security. Follow him on X @eottolenghi

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