On Thursday, foreign media indicated that Israeli forces simultaneously attacked the airports of Damascus and Aleppo in Syria, rendering them out of service. It was also reported that a plane carrying Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was forced to land in Baghdad instead of Damascus. Now, it is becoming clear that there is much more to what appears.
Israel Hayom can now say that the alleged Israeli strikes prevented the landing of not just one but two planes.
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Here are the details of the second plane. At 12:48, a Mahan Air Airbus A340-313 took off from Tehran's Mehrabad International Airport en route to Damascus. When it was just ten minutes away from landing in Damascus, the only suitable runway at the airport was bombed.
To prevent its diversion to Aleppo, the landing strip there was also bombed. The Lebanese network Al Mayadeen reported on the same day that Israeli missiles caused significant damage to runways at both airports. With both airports hit, the Airbus A340-313 plane had to turn around and ultimately headed back to Iran.
What was on this plane, and why – according to foreign reports – did Israel prevent its landing? According to information in my possession, its payload included 10 tons of anti-tank missiles and anti-aircraft missiles. My sources indicate that shortly before takeoff, intense activity by the Revolutionary Guards could be observed at Mehrabad International Airport
Video: Gallant reveals Iran building airport in Lebanon for terrorism / Credit: Go live
"We saw several white Toyota Hilux vehicles with tinted windows carrying several VIPs who looked to be bodyguards from the direction of Qadr air base of IRGC toward the aircraft. Due to my distance from them, I couldn't see their faces but we heard a rumor from my colleagues that one of those VIPs was Qaani [presumably referring to Esmail Qaani, commander of Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force]," a witness said.
According to Iranian sources, before taking off, the plane was parked next to an apron used by Fars' Air Qeshm cargo planes. According to a witness, that day, they also loaded several pallets into the cargo compartment of the Airbus A340-313. These pallets arrived from a storage yard belonging to the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards. "I have no doubt what was loaded into that Airbus A340 was weapons, as I saw from a distance. I couldn't guess the type of the weapons as they were inside pallets. I saw the pallets arriving from the Quds Force's storage facility", the witness said.
After the pallets were loaded, several senior officers from the Revolutionary Guards boarded the plane. They were supposed to accompany Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian to his meeting with leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah in Damascus. However, as mentioned, the minister's arrival was also canceled due to the explosion and it had to land in Baghdad.
Later on the same day, an Iranian government Airbus A321-231 flew him from Baghdad to Beirut, where he was supposed to meet with Hamas Deputy Chief Saleh al-Arouri and the Secretary-General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Ziyad Nahala. From Beirut, the Iranian Foreign Minister had to travel by car all the way to Damascus to meet with the president of Syria, Bashar Assad.
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