As the death rate climbs in Turkey and Syria following Monday’s earthquake, the question of providing international aid to war-torn Damascus is proving tricky. One fear is that arms could be smuggled in under the guise of humanitarian assistance. 

Washington has pledged assistance, but it refuses to cooperate with President Assad’s regime, which has been under American sanctions for more than a decade. Meanwhile, Mr. Assad’s closest allies, Iran and Russia, will try to use their aid packages to further consolidate his hold on power.  

“It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now,” the state department’s spokesman, Ned Price, said Monday. “Instead, we have humanitarian partners on the ground who can provide” earthquake-related aid.  

Meanwhile an Iranian Qeshm Fars Air plane landed at Damascus Monday night, ready to assist victims in the freezing winter cold. Yet did the aircraft carry anything else? “Israeli intelligence monitors flights from Iran to Syria that deliver humanitarian aid for fear that weapons are being smuggled in,” a veteran Israeli journalist, Yoni Ben Menachem, tweeted.

Israel routinely disrupts Iranian arms deliveries through Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Of late it has also periodically bombed the Damascus airport, where many of these deliveries land. 

Qeshm Fars Air, an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was sanctioned by the Department of the tTreasury in 2019 for illegally smuggling “operatives, weapons, equipment, and funds” to Iranian allies in the region and beyond. Last year a jet piloted by a Qeshm captain was temporarily seized in Argentina on suspicion of terrorism-related smuggling. 

“There is no evidence currently” that Iran is smuggling arms under the guise of humanitarian aid, “but based on past behavior, it is worth watching,” the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, tells the Sun. Mr. Brodsky, whose organization closely watches Iranian arm deliveries and other illicit exports abroad, cites several examples in which the IRGC has blurred the lines between humanitarian and military aid to allies.  

In 2019 a retired IRGC general, Said Ghasemi, said during a radio interview that a decade earlier, while training Muslim fighters in Bosnia, he disguised himself as an Iranian Red Crescent aid worker. IRGC operatives were also documented smuggling arms to Hezbollah in Red Crescent ambulances during its 2006 Lebanon war with Israel, Mr. Brodsky noted. 

In Iran, protesters are angry that their government is sending a large contingent to aid victims in Syria while failing to aid victims in the country’s own West Azerbaijan province, which also has suffered a series of devastating earthquakes, including on January 30.  

Israel, meanwhile, has a large rescue team in Turkey, a country with which it has been at odds. The experienced group has already delivered several victims from under the rubble. Jerusalem also said it is sending tents, medicine, and blankets to Syria, which is at war with Israel. 

Prime Minister Netanyahu said he received, via a “third party,” a request for aid in Syria. Damascus denied making the plea. A regime-backed newspaper, al Watan, quoted a government official as saying that Mr. Netanyahu is using the catastrophe to “mislead public opinion.” According to Israeli reports, the request came from Russian officials. Moscow declined to comment. 

Russia is one of more than 20 countries that have pledged to assist Turkish and Syrian rescue and recovery efforts. Yet, during the more than decade-long Syrian war, Russia has created stumbling blocks to aid deliveries for refugees and other war victims. 

The area in Syria that was hit by the earthquake is divided between Assad loyalists, Turkish occupation forces, and American-backed Kurds, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. America, which according to the state department has delivered more humanitarian aid to Syria during the war than any other country, will likely continue to rely on the Kurds to assist quake victims.    

The United Nations humanitarian aid apparatus has for years sent relief to the region through four points of entry. Yet, Russia has used its UN Security Council veto to limit deliveries to only one of the crossings, arguing that the UN is violating Syria’s sovereignty. 

Even before this week that crossing, Bab al-Hawa, was crowded with trucks, stuck in lines for days. Now, on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border, the road is badly damaged, making deliveries all but impossible. The Assad regime, Russia, and Iran are likely to use the crisis to try to control the rescue operation, forcing as many countries as possible to use the Damascus airport.

Israelis say they have the means to even now prevent Iranian arms deliveries to Syria. For months it has bombed suspicious truck processions and destroyed tarmacs at air bases. Now, such tactics could become a public relations disaster, as donors are already struggling to deliver aid to a country devastated by a horrific natural disaster.