Hezbollah terrorists featured U.S. armored personnel carriers in their latest video, and nobody seems to know how they got their hands on them.
The latest propaganda video was shot in Syria, where Hezbollah is forward deployed at the behest of its Iranian masters. Hezbollah is a Lebanon-based terrorist organization, heavily sponsored and managed by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Hezbollah also remains a powerful political entity in Lebanon, where it is entrenched in the government.
The Washington Post notes that some defense analysts believed the armored personnel carriers either were stolen from the Lebanese military or given up voluntarily. The U.S. has provided the Lebanese military with $221 million in U.S. military aid in 2016 so far, some of which came in the form of armored personnel carriers. The U.S. aid is provided to help Lebanon combat the growing threat of violent extremists from Syria.
The problem is both the Lebanese military and the U.S. Department of State deny that’s how Hezbollah got its hands on the equipment.
“Our initial assessment concurs: The M113s allegedly in Hezbollah’s possession in Syria are unlikely to have come from the Lebanese military. We are working closely with our colleagues in the Pentagon and in the Intelligence Community on to resolve this issue,” a Department of State official told The Washington Post.
Some analysts noted the carriers could have come from an old Lebanese militia group backed by Israel, or that Hezbollah could have stolen them from al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate. How al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate got its hands on personnel carriers, is itself another a mystery.
The case of the armored personnel carriers highlights the consistent use of U.S. military equipment by terrorists groups spanning Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya. In another strange case, a Texas City, Texas plumber was besieged by questions after one of his trucks ended up in an Islamic State propaganda video shot in Syria.
The U.S. Department of Treasury even queried the Toyota corporation in October 2015 how so many of its vehicles ended up becoming the car of choice for ISIS.
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