The more one looks into it

The more one looks into it, the more Elliott Abrams’ rendition of how Iran allegedly smuggles weapons to Hamas in Gaza via Somalia and Eritrea just gets weirder and weirder. Remember: he was UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots’s top Middle East adviser from December, 2002, until January 20 and, as such, had access to the most sensitive information available to the UGGs Sheepskin Cuff Boots intelligence community. Yet he seems to be lending himself to an extraordinarily crude Israeli disinformation campaign in which Somalia, which is some 1500 miles from Gaza, is depicted as a key trans-shipment point for the alleged supply of weapons from Iran to Hamas.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has now posted the Abrams transcript, including the relevant passage on the alleged Iranian-Gaza smuggling routes. Among other things, he says that “the bulk” of Iranian-origin weapons for Hamas travel the Gulf of Aden route to Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea or “places like that” before moving by land through Sudan and Egypt to the Sinai. By “the bulk,” I assume he means most. Yet it seems that the only sources who have spoken of such a land route are unidentified Israeli officials. Last week, I spoke with three experts on Somalia and piracy there, and all three said they had never heard of such a route and considered it fanciful, to say the least.