{"id":311685,"date":"2026-02-26T18:33:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T18:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311685\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T18:33:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T18:33:16","slug":"iran-involved-in-russian-migrant-tunnels-telegraph-reports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/311685\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran involved in Russian migrant tunnels, Telegraph reports"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia sends migrants<\/a> to Europe through secret tunnels originating in Belarus, possibly built by Hamas or Hezbollah, the Telegraph reported on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Lt. Col. Katarzyna Zdanowicz of the Polish Border Force told the\u00a0Telegraph that officers had uncovered “a total of four tunnels under the border with Belarus<\/a>,\u201d used for smuggling migrants into the country.<\/p>\n

According to military experts questioned by the Telegraph, the only Middle Eastern groups with the capabilities of building such tunnels are Hamas, Hezbollah, certain Kurdish factions, or potentially Islamic State.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things we immediately saw after the 2006 Lebanon war was parades of cement mixers queuing up in southern Lebanon… we were seeing loads and loads of Iranian tunnel construction,\u201d Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, an American military historian, told the Telegraph.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also have ample evidence of Hamas doing the same thing in Gaza. So if you want that deep tunnelling expertise, then the answer to your question is going to be with Middle Easterners.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

British fortifications expert and former sapper Major Rob Campbell also raised the possibility of Iranian proxy involvement, naming\u00a0 Hamas as a potential participant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had to speculate, experts from the Middle East would be Hamas<\/a> or Palestinian Islamic Jihad,\u201d he told the Telegraph.<\/p>\n

‘No definitive proof’ of Hamas involvement<\/p>\n

However, former Israeli intelligence official Sarit Zehavi said there was no definitive proof linking the tunnels to Hamas.<\/p>\n

\u201cDoes Hezbollah or any Iranian proxies have this capability? Yes. Are they the only ones? No. Probably others also have the knowledge, from Kurdish militias in Syria to ISIS,\u201d she said to the British newspaper.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Belarusian dictator and Putin loyalist President Alexander Lukashenko threatened to destabilize the European Union with \u201cdrugs and migrants\u201d. In the years since, Belarus has brought thousands of Middle Eastern migrants to the country, often under false pretenses, providing instructions on how to enter the EU.<\/p>\n

Experts warn that Belarus\u2019s strategy seeks to undermine Europe\u2019s stability as well as support for Ukraine, and many consider the humanitarian crisis unfolding on Belarus\u2019s borders to be largely engineered.<\/p>\n

Previously, Polish authorities uncovered a large tunnel near Narewka, 1.5 meters high and roughly 60 meters long. Most of the 180 migrants using the Narewka tunnel came from Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were arrested upon emerging in Poland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhysical and electronic security measures at the border, such as thermal imaging cameras and detection systems, allow us to immediately respond to any attempted violations of the state border, even underground ones,\u201d Zdanowicz said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russia sends migrants to Europe through secret tunnels originating in Belarus, possibly built by Hamas or Hezbollah, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[118379,63,65035,51,42,86,87,23311,43,4436,1593,40,38,41,39,2586],"class_list":{"0":"post-311685","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-belarus","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-gaza-tunnels","11":"tag-hamas","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-hezbollah","14":"tag-iran","15":"tag-migrants","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-poland","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-top-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topnews","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}