WHAT LINKS YEREVAN TO HEZBOLLAH?

Armenia is once again mired in a scandal involving the smuggling of weapons. According to the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, the crash of the Iranian Caspian Airlines Tehran-Yerevan TU-154 plane on 15 July was caused by an explosion in the baggage compartment of the aircraft which was carrying ... detonators for Hezbollah terrorists. According to experts, the detonators were very small - weighing no more than 2 grams - but extremely powerful. They had been sent by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The IRGC officers accompanying the cargo were also killed in the crash. They had planned to deliver the super-modern devices from Tehran to Armenia, from there to Syria and from Syria to Lebanon, where they were to be handed over to Hezbollah.

However, this was not the only transit option: it is at least likely that it was planned to send the detonators directly from Armenia to Lebanon by air: flights from Yerevan to Beirut existed even during Soviet times.

Armenian transit is considered quite reliable - the chances of discovery are zero. Yerevan strategists were quite confident that no-one would investigate an arms supply route from Shia Iran to Shia Hezbollah through "long-suffering" Christian Armenia, which also has a territorial conflict with Shia Azerbaijan. But the world is already aware of the true meaning of Iranian statements on "Islamic solidarity".

The DS cites a number of suspicious details about the accident. Thus, even on the day of the crash, rescue workers who arrived at the site found that there were almost no human remains - all had been burned to ashes. The plane had plenty of fuel, of course, but it is not without reason that the media reported that the cause could have been a terrorist attack: experts seem to have detected unmistakable traces of an explosion on board.

The picture finally became clear some time later. The pilot of the TU-154 which took off from Tehran for Yerevan, sent a distress signal 16 minutes after takeoff and, soon after that, the plane exploded. The disaster occurred just north of the Iranian capital - residents of the region where the plane exploded confirmed that they heard the sounds of explosions. The fact that an explosion occurred on the aircraft is also confirmed by witnesses who observed its fall. Nor is it mere coincidence that, just a few minutes later, a large security force arrived at the crash site. The authorities were aware of the cargo on board the aircraft.

Caspian Airlines has still not commented on the Corriere della Sera report that the Tehran-Yerevan aircraft crashed due to an explosion in the cargo compartment. The Armenian representation of Caspian Airlines told a News Armenia correspondent that they did not possess reliable information on the cause of the crash because the "black boxes" had still not been transcribed. "However, we believe such assumptions are absolutely irrelevant," representatives of the airline added.

Specialists from the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), who are investigating the cause of the crash, also declined to comment. In an interview with News Armenia, IAC Deputy Chairman Oleg Yermolov said that the IAC was not commenting on media reports: "We are investigators and have no right to pay attention to media reports." The IAC deputy chairman added that a comprehensive investigation into the crash was continuing, but it was difficult to say when it would be completed.

Yerevan analyst Levon Melik-Shahnazaryan went as far as saying that "the article in Corriere della Sera, as a litmus test, highlighted the vulnerabilities of Armenian ideology and propaganda". "It seems that our bureaucratic army, despite the measures and decisions taken by the president, is simply not aware of the fact that Armenia is under a massive information attack, a defeat here would have consequences as serious as defeat in a real war. Our enemies are currently deliberately undermining the good image, not only of Armenia, but of the Armenian people as a whole. The foundations of the internationally-established view of Armenians as talented, hardworking and law-abiding people are being undermined," Melik-Shahnazaryan believes.

Significantly, the head of the flight safety section of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of Armenia (GACAA), Serob Karapetyan, is also concerned about the image of Armenia. He called reports about detonators on board the civil aircraft "anti-Armenian hysteria". "Specialists of the Interstate Aviation Committee, with whom our specialist Armen Simonyan is working, said that the main cause of the crash was a fire in the engine due to a malfunction. Part of the engine came off and damaged other aircraft systems. An explosion and malfunctions in the engine are two different things. If there had been an explosion, it would have occurred inside the aircraft, but the engine was in the tail compartment behind the hull," said Karapetyan. Then he blurted out the most important thing: the GACAA representative flatly denied the possibility of ammunition being carried on board a civilian aircraft, especially on the territory of Armenia. "This is nonsense, anti-Armenian hysteria. They do not like close relations between Armenia and Iran and want to cast a shadow over them," Serob Karapetyan said, adding: "Do they believe that Armenia is a communications courtyard?"

The slip turned out, as it were, to be Freudian, because, firstly, detonators on board a plane are a flagrant violation of all conceivable norms for civil aviation. To carry explosive and flammable substances in civilian aircraft is strictly prohibited, regardless of whether they are in the cabin or in the baggage compartment, because it is impossible to imagine anything more dangerous than a fire and an explosion on board an aircraft flying at an altitude of 11 kilometres.

But, alas, civilian flights are used by smugglers much more frequently than you may think, especially by regimes under sanctions. There is a suspicion that a South African cargo and passenger plane, which crashed over the Atlantic, was carrying rocket fuel to bypass UN sanctions, and that this caused a fire on board,.

But Samvel Karapetyan's outrage about "the communications courtyard" is more serious, because most experts have a similar opinion about this case: the Armenian authorities could not but know that Hezbollah was receiving weapons via their territory. This became a talking point in Israel, where the news that an Iranian aircraft en route to Armenia was carrying weapons and detonators for Hezbollah caused understandable concern.

Political columnist Alex Veksler, while commenting on reports that the plane was carrying a large number of smart bombs and detonators for Hezbollah in Lebanon, said on the Israeli Russian-language channel Israel Plus: "Iran has decided to open a new route through Yerevan, in view of the improvement in relations between Syria and Armenia, as well as its high level of cooperation with Armenia." Veksler believes that Armenia and Iran are annoyed by the strengthening of strategic relations between Israel and Azerbaijan, after the warm reception given to the Israeli president in Baku. "But I do not think this is the first time Iran has carried weapons for the Hezbollah terrorist organization through Armenia," the Israeli analyst noted. He does not rule out the possibility that Iran may also supply weapons to Armenia, including to the separatists in Nagornyy Karabakh. According to this expert, "it is easy to do, and the Armenians will not give it up."

But most importantly, according to Veksler, these people (the IRGC officers carrying the detonators) could not land in Yerevan without official support from the government of Armenia. "That is impossible. The Armenian government was informed." 

Armenia serves as a transit route for the "black traffic" of weapons, including weapons for terrorists. And here, perhaps, we should take account of an important fact: neither Armenia nor Iran regard terror as something reprehensible or unacceptable. Otherwise, Yerevan would not have named a military lyceum after Monte Melkonyan and would not have put up monuments to Sogomon Teyleryan.

The cooperation between Armenia and Iran is no secret to anyone. A further point is that friendship between Yerevan and Tehran was established only after the collapse of the USSR, while terrorists from ASALA and Hezbollah had signed a "cooperation agreement" a decade earlier - as early as the first half of the eighties, when a group led by the late Imad Mugnie had just been established. Specialists involved in tracing the "black traffic" of arms have a very large file labelled "Armenia".

Enough has been said in the Bout case about the fact that post-Soviet republics were a kind of "arms supermarket" in the nineties. But in Armenia this process had a very clear and organized form from the very beginning. They engaged in major deals here, without the help of traffickers like Bout, who supplied arms, at best, to African masters and lords.

The first episode here was noted during the Balkan war. Then, the Bosnian Serbs received military equipment and accessories disguised as products from the Razdanmash plant.

Increasing diplomatic contacts between Armenia and representatives of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq prior to the second Gulf War also raised grave suspicions among experts. Thus there is a too much evidence suggesting that Armenia has become a transit route for arms trafficking not to give it due attention. 

Meanwhile, The Times quotes the Israeli secret service, a UN report and representatives of Hezbollah as saying that the Lebanese armed group which fought the Israeli army in 2006 is preparing for a new conflict. The publication claims that Shia militias have concentrated 40,000 surface-to-surface missiles on the border with Israel.

 According to some observers, war may erupt at any moment and, this time, the Islamists will be significantly stronger than three years ago. And certainly, some of these weapons came into their hands via Armenia.