West fears Iran is supplying chlorine bombs to Syria

Western security officials are investigating allegations that Iran supplied Chinese-made bombs filled with chlorine gas to the Syrian regime after satellite images emerged of a Syrian supply flight at Tehran’s main airport.

Iran is understood to have ordered 10,000 chlorine canisters from China that, according to reports, have been loaded on to flights to Syria.

Western security officials say the Assad regime has established a regular air freight route with Iran using Russian-built Ilyushin 76 Syrian military cargo aircraft.

Each flight between Damascus and Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran can carry up to 40 tons of equipment, and the weapons are believed to include short-range missiles, automatic rifles and ammunition.

Security officials are now trying to establish whether these flights have been used by Iran to provide the Assad regime with the chlorine bombs used against Syrian opposition fighters in incidents revealed exclusively by The Telegraph last week.

The Israeli military website Debkafile, which has close ties to Israel’s defence ministry, reported earlier this month that Iran was supplying Syria with the new Chinese-made chlorine bombs that are being used against the rebels. In one attack at Kafr Zita, on the outskirts of Hama, regime loyalists were said to have used Chinese-manufactured chlorine gas canisters rigged with explosive detonators.

Western security officials monitoring military activity between Iran and the Assad regime say the new series of arms shipments began on January 28 and have continued on a regular basis ever since, with Syrian heavy lift aircraft flying between Tehran and Damascus several times a week.

Photographs provided by intelligence satellites clearly show a Syrian Ilyushin 76 at Mehrabad airport, which is used as a supply base by the Iranian air force.

Many of the flights, which are in breach of UN sanctions imposed against Iran, took place while Iranian negotiators were taking part in talks in Geneva over Iran’s nuclear programme.

“The clear advantage of using this type of cargo plane is the large quantity of weapons that can be transferred in a single flight,” said a Western security official. “The provision of large amounts of Iranian arms to the Assad regime has undoubtedly helped it to gain the upper hand on the battlefield.”

In particular, Western leaders have become increasingly concerned by the regime’s use of chlorine bombs against opposition fighters. Claims that the regime regularly uses the weapons are now being investigated by a specialist team from the U.N.’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.

Telegraph