U.S. intelligence agencies helped Israel track down a Palestinian ship that tried to smuggle a large supply of weapons obtained from Iran, according to U.S. intelligence officials,” The Washington Times reports. “The intelligence assistance was considered vital in Israeli military efforts to pinpoint the exact vessel carrying the arms, which was captured in a daring commando raid earlier this month, said officials familiar with the effort.

“‘Our assistance was crucial,’” said one U.S. intelligence official.

The ship, the Karine A, was raided by Israeli commandos in the Red Sea on Jan. 3. A large cache of Iranian weapons was found, including small arms, mortars, rockets, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives.

Many of the weapons were identified as coming from Iranian production facilities, the intelligence officials said.

According to the officials, Israel approached the CIA last month with a request for help in locating a vessel it believed was carrying arms destined for the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli intelligence at one point thought they had found the vessel in the Persian Gulf port of Dubai, but that ship was not the one later captured with the arms.

U.S. intelligence agencies, using various high-tech intelligence-gathering means, were able to identify the Karine A after it loaded the weapons near Iran’s Kish Island, some 300 miles north of the major Iranian naval port of Bandar Abbas.

The discovery of the Palestinian weapons ship is a major success for U.S. military intelligence, which has sought to improve its monitoring of weapons shipments by sea since the early 1990s. In 1992, the Navy lost track of a North Korean ship, the Dae Hung Ho, as it delivered a shipment of missile parts to Iran.

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