Report: 2008 Mughniyeh hit was joint CIA-Mossad operation

The late Hezbollah international operations chief Imad Mughniyeh

Πηγή: Israel Hayom
Feb 1 2015

Washington Post: CIA and Mossad worked together to kill Hezbollah's international operations chief Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008 • According to report, CIA spotters were watching Mughniyeh when Mossad detonated bomb that killed him.

The 2008 killing of Hezbollah's international operations chief Imad Mughniyeh was a joint CIA-Mossad operation, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

Mughniyeh was killed on February 12, 2008 in Damascus, Syria by a bomb planted in a vehicle that was detonated as he passed by on foot. Hezbollah blamed Israel for Mughniyeh's death and vowed revenge. Israel never officially confirmed or denied its involvement in Mughniyeh's death.

According to the Washington Post report, the bomb that killed Mughniyeh was detonated remotely by Mossad agents in Tel Aviv, who were in communication with CIA spotters on the ground in Damascus. The U.S. reportedly helped build the bomb, which was tested numerous times at a CIA facility in North Carolina to make sure the potential blast area was limited, which would keep collateral damage to a minimum.

Former U.S. officials cited in the report said Mughniyeh was directly connected to the arming and training of Shiite militias in Iraq that were targeting U.S. forces.

According to the report, the authority to kill Mughniyeh required a presidential finding by then-President George W. Bush. A former U.S. intelligence official said the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the national security adviser and the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department signed off on the operation.

Former U.S. officials told The Washington Post that the CIA and Mossad worked together to monitor Mughniyeh's movements in Damascus for months ahead of the killing.

The CIA declined to comment on the Washington Post report.

Syria Uprising: Mossad, Blackwater And CIA 'Led Operations In Homs'

Members of the Free Syrian Army in Qusayr, 15kms from Homs

Πηγή: Huffington Post
March 7 2013

CIA, Mossad and Blackwater agents are involved in military violence in the Homs district, an Arab news agency exclusively reports.

According to Al-Manar, which is affiliated with Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group and political party, a coordination office with agents from the three branches of intelligence is in operation in nearby Qatar.

Salim Harba, a Syrian expert in strategic affairs, told Al-Manar the office was established: “Under American-Gulf sponsorship. The office includes American, French, and Gulf – specifically from Qatar and Saudi Arabia – intelligence agents, as well as CIA, Mossad, and Blackwater agents and members of the Syrian Transitional Council.”

He added: “Qatar has also made deals with Israeli and American companies to arm the armed groups, and Gulf countries have been financing the agreements.”

The revelations come as the agency reported around 700 Arab and Western gunmen had surrendered in Baba Amr, leaving the region under the control of the Syrian army. Israeli, American and European-made weapons were also seized in the district.

According to Harba, the captured gunmen were variously from the Gulf, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, Afghanistan, Turkey and France.

The website quoted a source as saying: “Huge and critical surprises will be uncovered in the coming few days… such as the kinds of arms seized, as well as the military tactics the armed groups followed, and the sides that supervised operations.”

Harba claims the Syrian security forces have paperwork that could “harm everyone who conspired against Syria.”

He added: “The significance of the security operation in Homs is due to the high expectations that regional and international sides had from the armed gangs in Baba Amr … they wanted Homs to be turned into a new Benghazi.”

According to state news agency SANA, President Bashar Assad insists he will continue to confront "foreign-backed terrorism." Since the uprising began last March, he has blamed armed gangs and foreign terrorists for the unrest, not protesters seeking change.

Western powers however have categorically denied any military involvement in Syrian internal conflict, Russia Today reported.

The United Nations believes more than 8,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of anti-government protests in March 2011.

Activists put the total closer to 10,000 deaths, 600 of which are believed to be children.

Israeli Airstrike in Syria Targets Arms Convoy, U.S. Says

In East Jerusalem, Israelis distributed gas masks on Wednesday as worries about security spread.

Πηγή: New York Times
By ISABEL KERSHNER and MICHAEL R. GORDON
Jan 30 2013

JERUSALEM — Israeli warplanes carried out a strike deep inside Syrian territory on Wednesday, American officials reported, saying they believed the target was a convoy carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weaponry on the outskirts of Damascus that was intended for the Hezbollah Shiite militia in Lebanon.

The American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, saidIsrael had notified the United States about the attack, which the Syrian government condemned as an act of “arrogance and aggression.” Israel’s move demonstrated its determination to ensure that Hezbollah — its arch foe in the north — is unable to take advantage of the chaos in Syria to bolster its arsenal significantly.

The predawn strike was the first time in more than five years that Israel’s air force had attacked a target in Syria. While there was no expectation that the beleaguered Assad government had an interest in retaliating, the strike raised concerns that the Syrian civil war had continued to spread beyond its border.

In a statement, the Syrian military denied that a convoy had been struck. It said the attack had hit a scientific research facility in the Damascus suburbs that was used to improve Syria’s defenses, and called the attack “a flagrant breach of Syrian sovereignty and airspace.”

Israeli officials would not confirm the airstrike, a common tactic here. But it came after days of intense security consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the possible movement of chemical and other weapons around Syria, and warnings that Jerusalem would take action to thwart any possible transfers to Hezbollah.

Thousands of Israelis have crowded gas-mask distribution centers over the last two days. On Sunday, Israel deployed its Iron Dome missile defense system in the north, near Haifa, which was heavily bombed during the 2006 war with Lebanon.

Syria and Israel are technically in a state of war but have long maintained an uneasy peace along their decades-old armistice line. Israel has mostly watched warily and tried to stay out of Syria’s raging civil war, fearful of provoking a wider confrontation with Iran and Hezbollah. In November, however, after several mortars fell on Israel’s side of the border, its tanks struck a Syrian artillery unit.

Several analysts said that despite the increased tensions, they thought the likelihood of retaliation for the airstrike was relatively low.

“It is necessary and correct to prepare for deterioration — that scenario exists,” Danny Yatom, a former chief of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, told Ynet, a news Web site. “But in my assessment, there will not be a reaction, because neither Hezbollah nor the Syrians have an interest in retaliating.”

Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, “is deep in his own troubles,” Mr. Yatom said, “and Hezbollah is making a great effort to assist him, in parallel with its efforts to obtain weapons, so they won’t want to broaden the circle of fighting.”

In the United States, the State Department and Defense Department would not comment on reports of the strike.

The episode illustrated how the escalating violence in Syria, which has already killed more than 60,000, is drawing in neighboring states and threatening to destabilize the region further.

Iran has firmly allied itself with Mr. Assad, sending personnel from its Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force to Syria and ferrying military equipment to Syria through Iraqi airspace.

Hezbollah, which plays a decisive role in Lebanese politics and has supported Mr. Assad during the uprising by providing training and logistical support to his forces, has long relied on Syria as both a source of weapons and a conduit for weapons flowing from Iran. Some analysts think Hezbollah may be trying to stock up on weapons in case Mr. Assad falls and is replaced by a leadership that is hostile to the militia.

One American official said the trucks targeted on Wednesday were believed to have been carrying sophisticated SA-17 antiaircraft weapons. Hezbollah’s possession of such weapons would be a serious worry for the Israeli government, said Matthew Levitt, a former intelligence official who is at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

“Israel is able to fly reconnaissance flights over Lebanon with impunity right now,” Mr. Levitt said. “This could cut into its ability to conduct aerial intelligence. The passing along of weapons to Hezbollah by the regime is a real concern.”

While some analysts said the Assad government might be providing the weapons to Hezbollah as a reward for its support, others were skeptical that Syria would relinquish such a sophisticated system.

Hezbollah has boasted that it has replenished and increased its weapons stocks since the 2006 war with Israel. During that war, Israeli bombardments destroyed some of its arms, and other missiles were used in a barrage that killed Israelis as far south as Haifa and that drove residents of northern Israel into shelters.

The Syrian statement, carried by state television, said an unidentified number of Israeli jets flying below radar had hit the research facility in the Jimraya district, killing two people and causing “huge material damage.” It cast the attack as “another addition to the history of Israeli occupation, aggression and criminality against Arabs and Muslims.”

“The Syrian government points out to the international community that this Israeli arrogance and aggression is dangerous for Syrian sovereignty,” the statement said, “and stresses that such criminal acts will not weaken Syria’s role nor will discourage Syrians from continuing to support resistance movements and just Arab causes, particularly the Palestinian issue.”

The Lebanese Army said in a statement on Wednesday that Israeli warplanes had carried out two sorties, circling over Lebanon for hours on Tuesday and before dawn on Wednesday, but made no mention of any attacks.

Israel has long maintained a policy of silence on pre-emptive military strikes. In October, officials refused to discuss an accusation by Sudan that Israeli airstrikes had destroyed a weapons factory in Khartoum, its capital. Israel also never admitted to the bombing of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007; Syria kept mum about that attack, too, and the ambiguity allowed the event to pass without Damascus feeling pressure to retaliate.

Amnon Sofrin, a retired brigadier general and former Israeli intelligence officer, told reporters here on Wednesday that Hezbollah, which is known to have been storing some of its more advanced weapons in Syria, was now eager to move everything it could to Lebanon. He said Israel was carefully watching for convoys transferring weapons systems from Syria to Lebanon.

Israel has made it clear that if the Syrian government loses control over its chemical weapons or transfers them to Hezbollah, Israel will feel compelled to act. Avi Dichter, the minister for the home front, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring the weapons included deterrence and “attempts to hit the stockpiles.”

“Everything will have ramifications,” Mr. Dichter said. “The stockpiles are not always in places where operative thinking is possible. It could be that hitting the stockpiles will also mean hitting people. Israel has no intention of hitting residents of Syria.”

Spies, murders and secret wars

Πηγή: The Gulf Today
By Hichem Karoui
July 20 2012

It is well that the American intelligence services identified the suicide-bomber who had carried out the attack of Burgas (July 18) as a “member of a Hizbollah cell operating in Bulgaria,” according to The New York Times (July 19). Israel’s own assertions have been, thus, confirmed.

What did Israeli and US intelligence services provide as evidence for their charges against Hizbollah and Iran? The question is still there. But maybe they think there is no need to answer.

In the shady world of wars between opposite spy services, every party knows his part and the part of the adversary in any case. The Israelis and the Americans have probably their reason to declare publicly that the attack was led under an Iranian steering, and the reason was they have struck the Iranians well before the attack in Burgas that killed five Israelis. Thus, they think the Burgas case was simply retaliation.

Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on the Burgas bombing, admitted that a secret war was going on between Israel and Iran. He particularly mentioned “a number of attacks and attempted attacks against Israeli targets, in Thailand, Georgia, India, Greece, Cyprus, and other countries.” The Israeli newspapers that reported the PM’s comment also reported a US anonymous official cited by The New York Times saying: “This was tit for tat.”

That was equal to saying: “We were expecting it, since we know what we’ve done to them!” The French dictum says: C’est de bonne guerre! (It is just fair war). This may also be taken as a tacit acknowledgement of the close cooperation between the Israeli and the US services about the targeting of Iranian scientists.

It is the story of the very intriguing book published recently by two Israeli authors: Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman, Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars. In their introduction, the authors say that Israel’s goal now “is to win – or, thinking of Iran, to distract and delay the enemy’s most dangerous plans – without committing large numbers of troops and planes, and without putting a major part of the Israeli population at risk from attacks by hostile neighbours’ forces.” Thereupon, they add that their book “will reveal more than Israel has ever been willing to declare publicly about assassinations as a tool, about its flattening in 2007 of a nuclear reactor in Syria, and about the sabotage and murders aimed at choking Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

From 2002 to 2010, the head of Mossad was Meir Dagan. One of his most important tasks was to stop Iran before it builds a nuclear bomb. According to Raviv and Melman, before leaving Mossad in December 2012, Dagan made some revelations to the media that were intended to be off the record, but finished widely published. His revelations indisposed and embarrassed the Israeli establishment. Some were about the CIA-Mossad hatched plans to stop Iran’s nuclear programme, including the Stuxnet virus and the targeting of Iranian scientists.

Anyway, there is no doubt about the fact that Iran has since the revolution been suspected of terrorism. As far as 1985, a secret diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks in 2011, issued by the US Secretary of State and circulated over the US embassies, said: “Iranian-backed terrorist groups have been responsible for almost 30 attacks since September 1984. Iraq, France, and the United States continue to be the primary targets.” The cable also notes: “While most of the recent incidents attributable to Iranian-backed groups have occurred in the Middle East, there is ample evidence to indicate that Iranian operational activity is continuing in other parts of the world.”

This line of thought has been consistent in the United States under successive administrations. We find the same pattern in several diplomatic cables about Iran. In 1996, during the Rafsanjani era, deemed to be more open to dialogue, a secret cable from the US Secretary of State to his embassies, described terrorism as “a tool of statecraft” in Iran. It said: “Since the clerics came to power, Iran and its surrogates have conducted kidnappings, assassinations, and bombings. Iran has also provided critical training, financing and arms to groups engaged in indiscriminate violence for political goals.”

Mostly, the Americans believe, as these cables show, that such activities “are conducted with full approval by the most senior levels of the Iranian government, who consider them to be legitimate tools of State policy.” One of the cables mentions the Intelligence and Security Ministry as first responsible for terrorist activities, “while the ministry of foreign affairs and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards also play roles.” Besides, these activities are assumedly “supported by Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security,” whose membership includes the president, the Supreme Leader, and the ministers of foreign affairs, intelligence and justice.

It is noteworthy that such thinking was initially destined to inform and guide the ambassadors of the United States. Otherwise, it was not supposed to be a part of a broad anti-Iranian propaganda campaign, since the circulation of the cables was internally restricted. We have therefore no reason to think that a US Secretary of State was just “intoxicating” the staff of his department with these stories coming out of a bad thriller.

No. Beyond the media war still raging between the US, Israel and Iran, there are still real obsessions with highly explosive and delicate issues of security, and not one of them (ie the three parties) seems heading towards appeasing and trust-building over the years. Quite the contrary, suspicion has accumulated. Today, we see doubts, questions, and worries rising like mountains, and the three of them continue to build the tools and seek the means to destroy the adversary.

At this point, no real dialogue is possible, and today we are really facing the possibility of an all-out conflict. As the editorial of The Gulf Today (July 20) hinted, “Israel may have got its casus belli.” It may decide to act on its own or with the green light from Washington, although not everybody in DC would agree on such plans. For example, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned Newsmax.TV that a confrontation with Iran would be disastrous for the United States, lasting for years and possibly devastating America’s economy.

But who said that America itself would attack Iran?

Hichem Karoui s an expert in US-Middle East relations at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Doha Institute).

'Mossad alerted Cyprus on Hezbollah plot to down Israeli plane'

Tourists in Nicosia. 

Πηγή: Israel Hayom
By Eli Leon, Shlomo Cesana, Ilan Gattegno and Reuters
July 15 2012

Cypriot police continue to question Swedish citizen of Lebanese origin, arrested on the island last week • Local media: Mossad agents in Cyprus to help with the investigation • Suspect found with photos, information about Israeli targets on the island.

Cypriot police are continuing to question a 24-year-old foreigner arrested last week for allegedly plotting an attack on Israeli tourists visiting the Mediterranean island, Cypriot media reported on Saturday.

The man, said to be a Swedish passport holder of Lebanese extraction, was arrested on July 7 and was detained following remand hearings held in camera, Sigma TV reported. He has not yet been charged with any offence.

Sigma TV's website reported the man had been tracking the movement of Israeli tourists on the island, while Cypriot newspaper Phileleftheros said he was attempting to pinpoint areas frequented by Israeli tourists and the buses they used.

A Cypriot government spokesperson confirmed the arrest of the Lebanese man, and according to media reports, the arrest took place after a "foreign intelligence agency" submitted information on the suspect to the authorities.

The island's public television reported that Israeli intelligence agents had provided the information on the suspect and his intentions, while Sigma TV claimed that Mossad agents were in Cyprus to help question the suspect.

The suspect's remand was reportedly extended by seven days following a court hearing on Friday. A Cypriot Police spokesman, Andreas Angelides, said, "We can confirm the arrest of a 24-year-old foreign national for specific, serious offences, and who is in custody by order of the court." However, the spokesman refused to give details of the suspect's identity and whether he had any accomplices.

Police reportedly arrested the Lebanese man in his hotel room, where they also found photos and documents containing information on Israeli targets, including flight departure and arrival times for Israeli airlines. Sigma TV said the suspect arrived in Cyprus with the intention of carrying out a terror attack against an Israeli plane or tourist bus, and according to other reports, he spent time in the southern coastal city of Limassol where he photographed "Israeli targets."

Based on the suspect's Lebanese origin, it is increasingly believed that the man is a Hezbollah operative who was collecting information for a terror attack that was being planned by the Shiite group, seeking retaliation for the 2008 assassination of one of its senior leaders, Imad Mughniyeh, which they blame on Israel.

It is also possible that the planned terror attack was part of an Iranian initiative to strike Israeli targets following a recent series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, for which Tehran holds Israel responsible.

The Jewish state's diplomats have been targeted in several countries in recent months by bombers Israel said were acting on behalf of Iran and Hezbollah.

In response to the reports from Cyprus, the Prime Minister's Office issued a statement saying, "There are no borders to Iranian terrorism. After Iran sent its people to assassinate — on U.S. soil — the Saudi Arabian ambassador and to perpetrate terrorist attacks in Azerbaijan, Bangkok, Tbilisi, New Delhi and Africa, its intention to perpetrate attacks in Cyprus has now been exposed.

"The international community needs to fight the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world," the statement added.

Two Iranian citizens were recently arrested in Kenya for reportedly attempting to launch a terror attack on Israeli and Western targets in the coastal city of Mombasa. The suspects were allegedly in possession of 15 kilograms of explosive material.

Cyprus, the third largest island in the Mediterranean, is a favorite vacation destination for Israelis, and some 15-20,000 Israelis visit the island every month.

The island, which sees overall about 2.4 million tourists a year, is considered a safe destination for Israelis, and between two to three flights a day depart from Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv to Nicosia. In the summer, there are additional charter flights between the two countries.

Larnaca airport, on the Greek part of the island, is located some 250 kilometers from Israel and can be reached in under an hour by plane. Most Israeli tourists stay in Nicosia or head east to Ayia Napa. The main attractions are Cyprus's clean beaches and clear blue waters.

The Lebanese suspect's reported July 5 arrival on the island coincided with Cyprus assuming the presidency of the European Union, an event marked by the gathering of a host of EU officials and commissioners on the island.

Cyprus lies just west of Syria and Lebanon but has been largely unscathed by the violence and upheaval rattling the Middle East. Its last major security incident was a botched car bomb attack on the Israeli embassy in the capital Nicosia in May 1988, killing three people.

Mossad Cutting Back on Covert Operations Inside Iran, Officials Say

Iranians hold a portrait of assassinated nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan during his funeral after the Friday prayers outside Tehran university on January 13, 2012.

Πηγή: Time
By KARL VICK
March 30 2012

Israel’s intelligence services have scaled back covert operations inside Iran, ratcheting down by “dozens of percent” in recent months secret efforts to disable or delay the enemy state’s nuclear program, senior Israeli security officials tell TIME. The reduction runs across a wide spectrum of operations, cutting back not only alleged high-profile missions such as assassinations and detonations at Iranian missile bases, but also efforts to gather firsthand on-the-ground intelligence and recruit spies inside the Iranian program, according to the officials.

The new hesitancy has caused “increasing dissatisfaction” inside Mossad, Israel’s overseas spy agency, says one official. Another senior security officer attributes the reluctance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who the official describes as worried of the consequences of a covert operation being discovered or going awry. Netanyahu was Prime Minister in 1997 when a Mossad attempt to assassinate senior Hamas official Khaled Meshaal in Amman Jordan ended in fiasco. Two Mossad operatives were captured after applying a poison to Meshaal’s skin, and returned to Israel only after Netanyahu ordered the release of the antidote. The Prime Minister also was forced to release Hamas’ spiritual leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin from an Israeli prison, dramatically boosting the fortunes of the religious militant movement.

“Bibi is traumatized from the Meshaal incident,” the official says. “He is afraid of another failure, that something will blow up in his face.”

Iranian intelligence already has cracked one cell trained and equipped by Mossad, Western intelligence officials earlier confirmed to TIME. The detailed confession on Iranian state television last year by Majid Jamali Fashid for the January 2010 assassination by motorcycle bomb of nuclear scientist Massoud Ali Mohmmadi was genuine, those officials said, blaming a third country for exposing the cell.

In that case, the public damage to Israel was circumscribed by the limits of Iran’s credibility: Officials in Tehran routinely blame setbacks of all stripes on the “Zionists” and “global arrogance,” their labels for Israel and the United States. But that could change if the Islamic Republic produced a captured Israeli national or other direct evidence – something on the lines of the closed circuit video footage and false passports that recorded the presence of Mossad agents in the Dubai hotel where Hamas arms runner Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room in January 2010. Difficult-to-deny evidence of Israeli involvement trickled out for weeks; Netanyahu was Prime Minister then as well.

The stakes are higher now. With the Iranian issue at the forefront of the international agenda, a similar embarrassment could undo the impressive global front Washington has assembled against the mullahs — perhaps by allowing Iran to cast itself as victim, or simply by recasting the nuclear issue itself, from one of overarching global concern into a contest confined to a pair of longtime enemies.

Some warn that the assassinations already run that risk. After the most recent killing, of nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan in January, the United States “categorically” denied involvement in the death and issued a condemnation. Western intelligence officials say he was at least the third Iranian scientist killed by Mossad operatives, who lately are running short of new targets, according to Israeli officials.

“It undercuts the consensus, the international consensus on sanctions,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department nuclear proliferation specialist who opposes the assassinations.

The covert campaign also invites retribution from Iran’s own far-reaching underground. In the space of just days last month, alleged Iranian plots against Israeli targets in Thailand, Azerbaijan, Singapore and Georgia were announced as thwarted, and Indian officials blamed Iran for a nearly fatal attack that went forward in New Delhi. The wife of an Israeli diplomat was injured by a magnetic bomb attached to her car by a passing motorcyclist, the precise method Israeli agents are alleged to have used repeatedly on the crowded streets of Tehran.

But scaling back covert operations against Iran also carries costs, especially as Iran hurries to disperse its centrifuges, some into facilities deep underground. Quoting an intelligence finding, one Israeli official says Iran itself estimates that sabotage to date has set back its centrifuge program by two full years. The computer virus known as Stuxnet — a joint effort by intelligence services in Israel and a European nation, Western intelligence officials say — is only the best known of a series of efforts to slow the Iranian program, dating back years. That alleged effort involves a variety of governments besides Israel, involving equipment made to purposely malfunction after being tampered with before it physically entered Iran. The resulting setbacks prompted Iran to announce it would manufacture all components of its nuclear program itself – something outside experts are highly skeptical Tehran has the ability to actually do.

“Iran has said for some time that they’re self-sufficient, but that’s a bag of wind,” says Fitzpatrick, now at London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. For example, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad in February announced that Iran had perfected a far more efficient centrifuge — a “fourth-generation” machine, three levels beyond its original centrifuges, made from designs purchased from Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan. Fitzpatrick has his doubts. “They haven’t been able to get the second generation to work over the last ten years,” he says.

The alternative is importing equipment, which leaves the product vulnerable to continued tampering — especially in the shadowy markets of front companies where Iran has been forced by U.S. and international sanctions to do much of its business. It can be almost impossible to know whom you’re actually doing business with, a circumstance that favors Western intelligence agencies.

“The easiest way to sabotage is to introduce faulty parts into the inventory from abroad,” says Fitzpatrick.

Between assassination and silent sabotage lies another covert option: Very loud sabotage. Recent years have brought a series of mysterious explosions at complexes associated with Iran’s nuclear program. TIME has reported Western sources saying that Israel was responsible for the massive November blast at a Revolutionary Guard missile base outside Tehran, which by dumb luck also claimed the life of the godfather of Iran’s missile program.

But other blasts remain genuine mysteries. Weeks after a huge explosion darkened the sky over a uranium enrichment site in Isfahan, in central Iran, Israeli officials appeared eager to see what had actually happened. “I’m not sure what,” a retired senor intelligence official said two weeks afterward, then offered an analysis based on open-source satellite photos available to anyone with an internet connection.

Mossad chief held talks on Iran during US visit - CIA

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo

Πηγή: Dailty News
By AFP
Feb 2 2012

Israeli: The head of Israel's intelligence service paid a secret visit to Washington last week to discuss Iran's nuclear program, the CIA director and a top US lawmaker said Tuesday.

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo flew to the US capital to consult with his American counterparts amid speculation over a possible Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, CIA director David Petraeus and Senator Dianne Feinstein revealed at a congressional hearing.

Sensitive trips by intelligence chiefs are usually kept secret but Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, mentioned Pardo's visit at a televised hearing as she discussed how Israel views Iran's nuclear ambitions.

“Well, the vice chairman and I have just met this past week with the director of Mossad, so that is a classified meeting,” Feinstein said at the hearing.

The Central Intelligence Agency director confirmed the meeting and said he was frequently talking to Israel's leaders, who he said viewed Iran's nuclear program as an “existential threat.” “Like you, obviously, I met with the head of Mossad when he was here,” Petraeus said. “That is part of an ongoing dialogue that has also included conversations that I've had with Prime Minister (Benjamin) Netanyahu and with (Defense) Minister (Ehud) Barak -- the latter almost on a monthly basis in the nearly five months that I've been in the job,” he said.

Feinstein cited her meeting with the Mossad director after asking US intelligence chiefs about the likelihood of possible pre-emptive military action by Israel against Iran's nuclear sites.

US National Intelligence Director James Clapper replied that sanctions would hopefully convince Tehran to abandon its nuclear work but said he would prefer to answer the question in a closed-door session. Israeli officials have sent conflicting messages about potential military strikes on Iran.

President Shimon Peres on Tuesday reaffirmed that “no option should be excluded against the program of Iran, which seeks to acquire weapons of mass destruction.” “The regime of the ayatollahs is the most corrupt in the world, from a moral point of view,” Peres told a conference in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.

Who Wants War With Iran?

Πηγή: LewRockwell
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Jan 21 2012

On Sept. 21, 1976, as his car rounded Sheridan Circle on Embassy Row, former Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier was assassinated by car bomb. Ronni Moffitt, a 25-year-old American women who worked with Letelier at the leftist Institute for Policy Studies, died with him.

Michael Townley, an ex-CIA asset in the hire of Chile's intelligence agency, confessed to using anti-Castro Cubans to murder Letelier, in what was regarded as an act of terrorism on U.S. soil.

Which raises a question: Are not the murders of four Iranian scientists associated with that nation's nuclear program, by the attachment of bombs to their cars in Tehran, also acts of terrorism?

Had the Stalin- or Khrushchev-era Soviets done this to four U.S. scientists in Washington, would we not have regarded it as acts of terrorism and war?

Iran has accused the United States and Israel of murder. But Hillary Clinton emphatically denied any U.S. complicity: "I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran."

"The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this," added National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, "We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this."

Victoria Nuland, Clinton's spokeswoman at State, denounced "any assassination or attack on an innocent person, and we express our sympathies to the family."

The assassinated scientist was a supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility that hosts regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. If Iran is building a bomb, it is not at Natanz.

U.S. denial of involvement leaves Mossad as the prime suspect. Israel has not denied it, and this comes at a sensitive time in U.S.-Israeli relations.

In Foreign Policy magazine, author and historian Mark Perry, claiming CIA documentation, alleges that Mossad agents in London posed as CIA agents and contacted Jundallah, a terrorist group, to bribe and recruit them to engage in acts of terror inside Iran.

Jundallah has conducted attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan province, killing government officials, soldiers, and women and children.

According to Perry, when George W. Bush learned of the Mossad agents posing as CIA while recruiting terrorists, he "went totally ballistic."

Yet Meir Dagan, head of Mossad at the time, denies it, and, ironically, has called any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities "the stupidest thing I have ever heard."

Who is telling the truth? We do not know for sure.

What we do know is that "Bibi" Netanyahu is desperate to have the United States launch air and missile strikes to stop Teheran from becoming the world's ninth nuclear power. And he is echoed not only by U.S. neocons, but GOP candidates save Ron Paul.

Nor should we be surprised.

To bring America into its war with Germany, Winston Churchill set up William Stephenson, "A Man Called Intrepid," with hundreds of agents in New York to engage in everything from bribery to blackmail of U.S. senators to get the United States to enter the war and pull England's chestnuts out of the fire.

This is what desperate countries do.

And while America First kept us out of the European war until Adolf Hitler invaded Russia, ensuring that Russians, not Americans, died in the millions to defeat him, eventually America was maneuvered into war.

Whoever is assassinating these Iranian scientists, be it homegrown Iranian terrorists, Jundallah at the instigation of Israel, or Mossad, the objective is clear: Enrage the Iranians so they strike out at America, provoking a U.S.-Iranian war.

Is such a war in America's interests? Consider.

While U.S. air and naval power would prevail, Iranian civilians would die, as some of their nuclear facilities are in populated areas. Moreover, we cannot kill the nuclear knowledge Iran has gained. Thus we would only set back their nuclear program by several years. And a bloodied and beaten Iran would then go all-out for a bomb.

The regime, behind which its people would rally, would emerge even more entrenched. U.S. bombing did not cause Germans to remove Hitler or Japanese to depose their emperor. And we lack the ground troops to invade and occupy a country three times the size of Iraq.

All U.S. ships, including carriers in that bathtub the Persian Gulf, would be at risk from shore-based anti-ship missiles and the hundreds of missile boats in Iran's navy. Any sea battle would send oil prices to $200 and $300 a barrel. There goes the eurozone.

Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Shia of the Saudi oil fields and Bahrain, home port to the Fifth Fleet, and Iranian agents in Afghanistan and Iraq could set the region aflame.

As America started up the road to Baghdad in 2003, Gen. David Petraeus is said to have asked, "Tell me how this ends."

Before some agent provocateur pushes us into war with Iran, Congress should debate the wisdom of authorizing President Obama, or anyone else, to take America into her fifth war in a generation in the Middle and Near East.

Patrick J. Buchanan [send him mail] is co-founder and editor of The American Conservative. He is also the author of seven books, including Where the Right Went Wrong, and Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War. His latest book is Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025? See his website.

Mossad Behind Tehran Assassinations, Says Source

The funeral of Darioush Rezaei on July 24. Mossad has been blamed for the killing

Πηγή: Spiegel

By Ulrike Putz in Jerusalem
08/02/2011

One atomic researcher after the other has died in a series of recent murders in Iran. Is Israel's Mossad trying to sabotage the construction of a nuclear bomb with the attacks? Officials in Jerusalem aren't denying anything. Israeli military generals are even more hawkish, and their calls for air strikes on Iran are growing louder.

"Israel is not responding," Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier this week when asked if his country had been involved in the latest slaying of an Iranian nuclear scientist. It didn't exactly sound like a denial, and the smile on his face suggested Israel isn't too bothered by suspicions that it is responsible for a series of murders of physicists involved in the controversial Iranian nuclear program.

There is little doubt in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies that Israel is behind the assassination of Darioush Rezaei. "That was the first serious action taken by the new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo," an Israeli intelligence source told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

On July 23, Rezaei became the latest victim in a mysterious series of attacks over the past 20 months which has seen the virtual decimation of the Islamic republic's elite physicists. The 35-year-old died after being shot in the throat in front of his daughter's kindergarten in east Tehran. The Iranian press has reported that the two alleged perpetrators in the attack escaped on a motorcycle.

A Setback for Iran's Nuclear Program

So who was the man who was shot in front of his wife and daughter? According to the Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has since confirmed what had already been reported by the Israeli media -- namely that the physics student had worked on the development of high-voltage switching systems, a key component that is crucial to setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead. The physicist had apparently been seen daily at a nuclear research center in northern Tehran.

The fact that Rezaei's death has struck a nerve in Iran is apparent in the official reaction to the killing. Kazem Jalali, the head of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, said the murder of Iranian physicists showed that the United States and Israel are "desperate" in the face of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Rezaei is the third Iranian nuclear physicist who has paid for his job with his life since the start of 2010:

In January 2010, the nuclear physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi died when a remotely detonated bomb rigged to a motorcycle exploded next to his car. Western experts considered Mohammadi to be one of Iran's top nuclear scientists.
On Nov. 29, 2010, unknown perpetrators committed two attacks which involved motorcyclists attaching explosive devices to their victims' cars while driving. Majid Shahriari, a professor of nuclear physics who specialized in neutron transport, which is relevant for making bombs, was killed when his car exploded. His wife was seriously injured in the attack.
Fereidoun Abbasi was targeted in a simultaneous attack. Abbasi, an expert in nuclear isotope separation, noticed the suspicious motorcyclist, however, and he and his wife jumped out of the car. They were both injured in the explosion. After Abbasi recovered, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appointed him as one of Iran's vice presidents as well as head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization.

Iran suspects that a "triangle of wickedness," consisting of the US, Israel and their hired accomplices, is behind the attacks, according to sources in Tehran. Washington denies any responsibility: "We were not involved," a spokeswoman for the US State Department said in response to Rezaei's death. Israel, for its part, has opted for a policy of ambiguous silence.

Part of a Campaign

According to sources in Israeli intelligence, the killings are part of a campaign to sabotage, or at least slow down, Iran's nuclear program. The alleged campaign also involves other tactics as well as targeted assassinations. The cyber-attack using the Stuxnet computer virus, which paralyzed large parts of the Iranian nuclear program in the summer of 2010, is supposedly also part of Israel's secret campaign against Iran.

But for hardliners in the Israeli military, the covert action does not go far enough. The calls for bombing Iran are getting louder and louder, especially among Israeli Air Force officers, the informant told SPIEGEL ONLINE. There is apparently a heated debate about the effectiveness of such assassination campaigns and whether they can fulfill their goal, reported Yossi Melman, intelligence expert at the Israeli daily Haaretz. In addition, Israel has already faced fierce criticism over other assassinations allegedly committed by its agents in foreign countries.

Until now, Mossad experts have been able to convince decision-makers that the construction of an Iranian bomb can best be delayed through attacks on key figures and nuclear facilities. But it is unclear how long Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will continue to follow this advice. Politicians in Jerusalem know well that Mossad is also pursuing its own interests when it argues that its agents should play the leading role in the struggle against Iran.

"As long as Mossad is leading the fight against the bomb, it will get the big budgets," said the source. Whether there will be an open attack on Iran's nuclear facilities in the future will partly depend on whether the Israeli military or intelligence wins the internal power struggle, the source said. "Just like with everything, this is also about prestige."

Mossad's most audacious plots

CCTV footage of the killing of a Hamas commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in a Dubai hotel

Πηγή: The Telegraph

By Paul Chapman in Wellington

12:18PM BST 20 Jul 2011


Its reputation for ruthless efficiency was established with the abduction of Adolf Eichmann, a leading Nazi who had fled to Argentina after the Second World War.

Mossad agents found Eichmann in 1960 and smuggled him back to Israel, where he was tried and executed.

In the 1970s, in an operation known as the Wrath of God, the agency hunted down and killed 11 Palestinians it blamed for the Munich massacre.

Among the more elaborate and daring plots Mossad is known or suspected of being involved in are:

1968: The German freighter Scheersberg A disappears on a voyage between Antwerp and Genoa, together with 200 tonnes of yellowcake, or concentrated natural uranium, which was reportedly transferred to an Israeli ship. After 15 days at sea, the Scheersberg A docked at the Turkish port of Iskenderun.

1979: A devastating explosion at a factory in Toulouse, France, producing components for an Iraqi nuclear reactor is blamed on Mossad. An Israeli air strike in 1981 subsequently destroyed the reactor itself.

1986: Mossad undercover agent Cheryl Bentov lures Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli nuclear whistleblower, from Britain to Italy. In Rome he is abducted by Mossad and returned to Israel to be put on trial for treason.

1990: Israeli agents are blamed for shooting dead Gerald Bull, a Canadian engineer and ballistics expert, outside his Brussels apartment. Bull was working on Project Babylon, a supergun for Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.

1997: Khaled Mashal, the Hamas representative in Jordan, is injected in the ear with a toxin. Two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists are arrested by Jordanian authorities. The killing attempt fails.

1998: Five Mossad agents are caught wiretapping the home of a Hezbollah agent in the Swiss city of Bern. Four are freed but a fifth is jailed for a year by a Swiss court.

2010: An estimated 26 Israeli agents travelling on false foreign passports are suspected of being involved in the killing in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabouh, a senior Hamas military commander. The incident leads to a diplomatic row with Britain, Ireland and Australia, whose passports were forged for the operation.

2011: Saudi Arabian security forces claim Mossad sent a vulture into their airspace to gather information. They say the bird was carrying a GPS transmitter and a tag bearing an identification code from Tel Aviv University. A few weeks earlier, an Egyptian official claimed a shark that attacked tourists off the coast of Sharm el Sheikh had been placed there by the Israeli spy service.

Military professionals versus government ideologues in Israel

Πηγή: Foreign Policy

Posted By Yoram Peri,  Friday, June 17, 2011 - 6:37 PM

The Israeli public has not yet grasped the profound significance of retired Mossad chief Meir Dagan's recent statement about Israel's security problems. It revealed a fundamental split between the upper echelons of the professional defense establishment and the more ideologically driven government politicians over both foreign policy and the assessment of real threats to Israel's very existence.

Dagan blamed the government for its failure to adopt a political initiative in light of the Palestinians' diplomatic offensive. He called on Israel to renew negotiations with the Palestinian Authority and to respond positively to the Arab League's initiative for a comprehensive peace with the Arab states. Most importantly, he warned against an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, calling it "military adventurism" on the part of the Benjamin Netanyahu-Ehud Barak duo.