Did Israel participate in the murder of Qassem Soleimani?
What Israeli intelligence revelations say about the murder of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
A senior Israeli intelligence official said in an interview that Israel played a role in the assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who led the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Soleimani was probably Iran's most revered military official. He was killed by an American targeted drone strike on January 3, 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. The same missile attack also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who commanded the Popular Mobilization Committee, an umbrella organization made up of some 40 pro-Iranian militias in Iraq. The then US president, Donald Trump, claimed responsibility for the attack.
In the months following Soleimani's assassination, Iranian state media claimed that the operation targeting the IRGC was carried out with intelligence and logistical support from governments of several countries, including Germany. United Kingdom, Qatar, Kuwait and Lebanon. Meanwhile, Western media reports said that "Israeli intelligence helped confirm the details" of Soleimani's whereabouts shortly before he was assassinated. There has been no independent confirmation of these claims.
Now, however, it appears that a recently retired Israeli general who headed the country's military intelligence agency during Soleimani's assassination has claimed partial responsibility for his killing. According to the Associated Press , Major General Tamir Heyman, who until October this year headed the Directorate of Military Intelligence of the Israeli Defense Forces, has become "the first official to confirm Israel's involvement" in the controversial murder.
Heyman is believed to have given an interview in late September to Mabalat Malam, the Hebrew-language magazine of the Israel Intelligence Heritage Center, which is seen as closely affiliated with the Israeli intelligence community. In the interview, available in the current issue of the magazine, Heyman states that "Assassinating Soleimani was a result, since our main enemy, in my eyes, are the Iranians." He adds that Soleimani's killing was one of "two significant and important murders during my tenure" as army intelligence chief.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/israele-omicidio-qassem-soleimani/ on Mon, 27 Dec 2021 06:12:52 +0000.