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The technique came into play last month when a U.S. spy satellite, looking down on an Iranian air base, captured images of military crews loading what U.S. intelligence analysts concluded were eight C-802 Noor anti-ship cruise missiles on board a transport plane, according to intelligence officials.
The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.
The ability of U.S. analysts to say with confidence what was in the boxes set off a chain of events that blocked the shipment to Syria, the U.S. intelligence officials said. They said the weapons were to be forwarded to Hezbollah guerrillas fighting Israeli forces in Lebanon.
The C-802 is "the size of a small truck," says Robert Hewson, a missile expert with Jane's, an authoritative military reference service. Information about the crate, proximity to the place of manufacture and shipping route would enable an analyst to identify it with near certainty as a C-802, he says.
Hewson said there is an entire discipline in intelligence on the technique of identifying weapons based on their containers.
Dino Brugioni helped develop the technique during a career that spanned four decades in increasingly senior positions as a U.S. imagery intelligence analyst.
Brugioni, who in retirement has been a consultant to U.S. intelligence agencies, said analysts use large catalogs with detailed information on weapons crates. The boxes are distinctive, he said. An analyst can quickly tell the type of ammunition or artillery shells by the box used to ship them, he said.
Brugioni said other indicators — for example, a crew taking precautions by loading explosives on a plane far from any buildings — tell analysts that boxes are not empty.
After war broke out between Israel and Hezbollah on July 12, U.S. intelligence analysts began looking for evidence that Iran would try to resupply missiles to the group, the U.S. officials said. The effectiveness of earlier Hezbollah missile attacks, the belief that it had only a handful of the anti-ship missiles at the war's start and Iran's role as the group's principal source of weapons fed this concern, they said.
On July 14, Hezbollah fired at least three C-802 missiles, one of which damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon and killed four sailors, Israeli's military said.
The use of the C-802s in these attacks helped solidify claims by Israel and the Bush administration that Iran was arming Hezbollah. Iran also trained Hezbollah fighters in the operation of the missile system and sent advisers to Lebanon to assist in the missiles' use, according to John Bolton, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
At a Senate hearing July 27, Bolton said Iran provides Hezbollah an estimated $100 million per year in weapons and aid. "They're the paymasters, and they're calling the tune," he said.
Brugioni said that during crises, U.S. satellites regularly photograph air bases of countries involved, because shipping weapons by air is often the option of choice in a rapidly developing conflict.
Iran bought 60 of the missiles, sometimes mislabeled "Silkworms," between the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991 and 1997, when protests by the Clinton administration led China to suspend sales. Since then, under license from China, Iran has been manufacturing the C-802 missiles on its own, Hewson said.
