Hizballah’s massive arms smuggling operation threatens to undermine the cease-fire along the Lebanese-Israeli border.  With support from Iran and Syria, Hizballah has nearly tripled the rocket inventory it had before the 2006 war, directly violating numerous elements of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the war and called for Hizballah to be disarmed. The international community must provide U.N. troops in Lebanon with the legal mandate and political support to help the Lebanese government assert its authority.

Hizballah—with support from Iran and Syria—has amassed a larger weapons arsenal than before the 2006 Lebanon war.

• Hizballah has amassed more than 40,000 long- and short-range rockets deployed both north and south of the Litani River— nearly three times more than the number of rockets the terrorist army had before its war with Israel in 2006.
  
  
• Hizballah has acquired new Iranian rockets with a range of 185 miles, allowing it to target all major Israeli population centers, according to Israeli defense officials.
  
  
• The Al-Qods Force, an elite branch of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has provided Hizballah with $100 to $200 million, helping the terrorist organization rearm in violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, according to congressional testimony by Daniel Glaser, a top Treasury Department official.
  
  
• In his most recent report on the implementation of the resolution, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon reported that UNIFIL and the Lebanese Armed Forces have discovered arms, ammunition and explosive devices in the U.N forces’ area of operation.

Hizballah is undermining the authority of the Lebanese government by maintaining an independent communication and military infrastructure.

• Hizballah is installing Iranian-built, Syrian-linked fiber-optic communications lines and encrypted Iranian command-and-control systems, according to a report in Defense News.
  
  
• Senior Israeli military intelligence officer Brig. Gen. Yossi Baidatz testified before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hizballah has built a massive underground infrastructure south of the Litani River.
  
  
• Lebanese authorities state that Hizballah’s communications network covers the entire area south of the Litani River as well as the Mediterranean coastline to the Syrian border, the area of Mount Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley, and a series of Palestinian refugee camps south of Beirut.
  

UNIFIL has refused to confront Hizballah over its repeated violations of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701. 

• Under the resolution, U.N. forces in Lebanon are specifically authorized to “take all necessary action … to ensure that its area of operations is not utilized for hostile activities of any kind.”
  
  
• While Israeli officials have identified 2,500 non-uniformed Hizballah fighters operating in southern Lebanon, the U.N. has refused to identify the affiliation of the armed forces, only saying that they operate in “flagrant and serious violation of resolution 1701.”
  
  
• On at least four separate occasions in the last six months, U.N. forces identified armed Hizballah operatives and weapons convoys, but failed to intercede in accordance with their U.N. mandate, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.
  
  
• On the night of March 30, U.N. troops on patrol in southern Lebanon stopped a truck carrying weapons and ammunition, but let it go after armed Hizballah men threatened the troops at gunpoint.
  
  
• Although UNIFIL is authorized to use photographic and recording devices, UNIFIL troops agreed to discard evidence of Hizballah’s violations of the resolution after being confronted by armed fighters and Lebanese civilians, according to the most recent implementation report.
  

The international community must take further action to update UNIFIL’s mandate to ensure that Hizballah cannot threaten Israel.

• The international community should permit UNIFIL to operate in all areas south of the Litani River. Currently, Hizballah operates freely in the villages in southern Lebanon, because UNIFIL cannot enter without prior approval from the Lebanese army.
  
  
• The mandate of U.N. forces in Lebanon should be expanded to allow for the monitoring of the Lebanese-Syrian border in order to stop the flow of arms from Iran and Syria to Hizballah. The mandate should also be expanded to allow forces to patrol Hizballah strongholds north of the Litani River.
  
  
• The United States should hold Syria and Iran accountable for violating the U.N. arms embargo against Hizballah by bringing the full force of U.S. sanctions to bear against both nations.  Foreign companies continuing to conduct business in those countries should be sanctioned.
  
  
• The international community should hold Iran and Syria accountable for violating U.N. Security Council Resolution 1747’s ban on the export and transshipment of Iranian weapons.