That's a key base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which these days pretty much controls Hezbollah.

The timing of the seizure just before dawn Wednesday raised speculation that it was intended to deflect attention from a U.N. debate on alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Gaza Strip in an offensive almost a year ago.

Those allegations were given immense international weight by a scathing U.N. report released Sept. 15.

With the intent to rebut the charges and justify its actions in Gaza, Israel has been waging a strident propaganda campaign claiming Iran arms Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas faction that controls Gaza with rockets capable of blasting Tel Aviv.

The seizure of the German-owned, Antiguan-flagged freighter Francop in international waters off Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean by naval commandos of the elite Flotilla 13 unit was the biggest haul Israel has made in its drive to cut off arms supplies to its enemies.

Israel's navy commander said the intercept occurred on a routine patrol, but all the signs are that it was the result of a complex intelligence operation.

According to various sources in Israel, Lebanon and Cyprus, the arms were shipped from Bandar Abbas Oct. 14 aboard the Iranian cargo ship Visea. It is owned by the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines Group.

The arms shipment was under surveillance from the moment it left Bandar Abbas in a complex intelligence operation involving Israel, the United States and several NATO members.

The Visea sailed into the Arabian Sea and then north up the Red Sea to the Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean. It docked at the Egyptian port of Damietta on Oct. 26.

Thirty-six olive green containers holding, by Israeli count, 3,000 107mm and 122mm Katyusha rockets, along with large quantities of armor-piercing artillery shells, hand grenades and Kalashnikov ammunition, were offloaded.

The Israelis estimated that was enough to keep Hezbollah fighting for a month.

The containers remained at Damietta for a week until they were loaded onto the 8,622-ton Francop. From there, the Israelis say, the ship was due to go to Limassol, Cyprus, then to the Syrian port of Latakia from where the weapons would be delivered overland to Hezbollah.

The Israelis said cargo certificates proved the containers were bound for Syria, but they have not yet produced the documents.

Syria and Iran deny the Francop carried Iranian arms destined for Syria. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem even claimed the vessel was sailing in the opposite direction carrying "imported goods" from Syria to Iran.

The Israelis say the Francop's crew, along with the ship's owners, Gerd Bartels of Hamburg, did not know the freighter was carrying weapons.

Most of the arms were hidden behind stacked bags of polyethylene labeled in English "NPC National Petrochemical Company" with a flame logo used by the company and Iran's Oil Ministry. Some of the containers were marked IRISL.

When the Israelis boarded the Francop Wednesday they found the arms very quickly, suggesting they knew exactly what they were looking for.

The Israelis clearly were alerted about the arms shipment even before it left Iran, indicating that they may have agents on the ground there or even inside Hezbollah.

Dozens of suspected Israeli agents have been rounded up in Lebanon over the last year, and it can be presumed that others may remain in place.

According to Ronen Bergman, an Israeli security expert and author of the 2008 book "The Secret War with Iran," Israeli intelligence "has been watching weapons deliveries to Hezbollah for some time now."

However, he says the Israelis have not moved to stop them, probably to protect their clandestine sources.

Reported attacks on Iranian arms shipments destined for Hamas that were destroyed in air and naval attacks in the Red Sea region earlier this year remain shrouded in mystery.

Israel has made no official comment, but the raids are widely considered to have been the work of Israel's military.

This time the Israelis have gone public in a spectacular manner, possibly to counter the war crimes allegations by bolstering their claim that Iran supports terrorism and cannot be trusted to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

earlier related report
Israel urges action against Iran over weapons ship
Tel Aviv, Israel (AFP) Nov 5 - Israel called on Thursday for the international community to take action against Iran, blaming Tehran for dispatching a weapons-laden ship to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the boat intercepted by the Israeli navy overnight Wednesday carried thousands of rockets "whose only aim is to hit civilians and kill as many civilians as possible."

"That's a war crime that the UN General Assembly, which is meeting today, should investigate, discuss and prevent," Netanyahu said.

The hawkish Israeli leader was seeking to link the capture of the ship to the UN body's debate on a contentious report that accused Israel and Palestinian militants of Gaza war crimes.

Some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the three-week-long Gaza war at the turn of the year, which Israel launched with the aim of halting Palestinian rocket attacks.

Israel was also hit by thousands of rockets fired by Hezbollah during the 2006 war in Lebanon, and Netanyahu said the captured ship proved Iran was helping Hezbollah to prepare for another round of fighting.

"This is what the international community should have been focused on, on all days and specifically today," Netanyahu said.

"Instead, they have chosen to meet to condemn the IDF (Israeli military) and Israel in an attempt to undermine our legitimate right to self defence."

The timing of the capture was seen as a major boost to Israeli efforts to rally international opposition to Iran and the Gaza report.

"Officials in Jerusalem had not dared even to dream of better timing for the capture of the vessel carrying so much arms and ammunition bound for Hezbollah," an editorial in Israel's Maariv newspaper said.

"The capture of the ship was, for Israel, like a gift from heaven."

Israel said the ship was carrying "hundreds of tonnes" of weapons, including rockets, grenades and ammunition.

A UN Security Council resolution which brought an end to the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel demanded the disarmament of all militias in Lebanon and imposed a ban on all arms exports to them.

Iran and Hezbollah have both denied any link to the ship.

Israeli media reported the military tracked the containers from Iran to the Egyptian port of Damietta, where they were transferred onto the German-owned "Francop" vessel en route to Syria.

Israel views Iran as its main strategic threat because of Tehran's support for Hezbollah and Palestinian militants, its leader's frequent predictions of the demise of the Jewish state and its nuclear enrichment programme.

"We are going to expose everything we find on the ship," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP.

"Iran has been caught red-handed breaching and violating Security Council resolution 1747, which prohibits any weapons exports from Iran."

Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power, believes Iran's programme is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, charges denied by Tehran.

The seized arms may help Israel to ramp up pressure on Iran to accept a deal brokered by the International Atomic Energy Agency whereby it would send stocks of low-enriched uranium abroad for conversion into nuclear fuel.

"Now the Iranians have been caught red-handed -- an Iranian company involved in the exporting of arms to Hezbollah as Western suspicions of Iran peak after Tehran's murky response to the compromise proposal on uranium enrichment," Israel's Haaretz newspaper said.

Israel fought Hezbollah to a bloody 34-day stalemate in the summer of 2006 that killed more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and more than 160 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of increasing its rocket arsenal and last month Israeli President Shimon Peres said Hezbollah was turning Lebanon into a "powderkeg."

Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in September his group did not want war but that if Israel attacked Lebanon it was ready to "destroy" the Israeli army.

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