2024-09-30 14:10:27
Already in January 2020, the Israelis targeted the head of the Hezbollah terrorist movement, Hassan Nasrallah. Their secret service watched in detail how the Iranian general and commander of the elite units of the Revolutionary Guards, Kasim Suleimani, was heading for him in an armored convoy to Beirut, Lebanon.
At that time, the Jewish state feared the outbreak of war and ultimately spared Nasrallah. However, he passed on information to Washington, thanks to which the Americans neutralized Suleimani with a drone soon after. Israel decided to strike at Nasrallah less than five years later, on Friday his bunker in Beirut was covered with 80 tons of special bombs that can penetrate more than a meter wide concrete.
According to the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal, Nasrallah held talks with his commanders in an 18-meter-deep shelter under a residential building. Rescuers pulled his corpse from the wreckage, allegedly without external injuries. Israel’s Channel 12 reported that the head of Hezbollah suffocated by poisonous gases created by aerial bomb explosions.
The successful assassination of a man who led a movement demanding the destruction of the state of Israel is the result of extremely precise work by the secret services. Although Nasrallah was extremely careful and did not use electronics, the Jewish state’s spies gathered information about him for over 20 years so that they could eliminate him at the right moment.
The Reuters agency, citing its unnamed source, wrote that the Israelis had infiltrated the circle of his closest collaborators. According to the French newspaper Le Parisien, the location in the bunker in the southern suburbs of Beirut was revealed by an agent operating among his Iranian colleagues. Tehran has been financing and arming the Hezbollah movement for a long time, and it practically functions as its extended arm in the Middle East.
“This is a huge blow and an intelligence failure for Hezbollah,” Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish Defense University was quoted as saying by Reuters. “The Israelis knew he was meeting with other commanders and they just went out for him.
The Israeli army began preparing for the attack against the deep cover, where Nasrallah was planning attacks against the Jewish state, several months ago. Acting on accurate intelligence, the officers planned to destroy the bunker with a series of timed explosions of aerial bombs, each setting the stage for the next, the Wall Street Journal reported.
However, the exact timing of the attack was not planned long in advance. Israeli intelligence learned about the meeting in the Beirut bunker only a few hours before it took place. Nasrallah’s liquidation was approved directly by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the New York hotel where he was preparing for his speech at the United Nations.
“We had real-time intelligence,” Israeli military spokesman Nadav Shoshani said. An hour after the attack, Netanyahu’s office released a photo of him on the phone giving the go-ahead to the strike.
Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in New York City, giving the “Green Light” for the Decapitation Strike against Hezbollah in Beirut. pic.twitter.com/vSmiZc5oD1
— OSINTdefender (@sentdefender) September 27, 2024
The American newspaper The New York Times wrote that the elite special unit 8200, which cooperates with the Mossad but formally falls under the Israel Defense Forces, was significantly involved in collecting data on Nasrallah.
“The culture of work in this unit is based on the fact that the word ‘can’t’ does not exist. Everything is possible and everything can be managed,” described its former employee Kobi Samboursky in one of the few public statements regarding the top secret activity of 8200.
In recent years, it has built cutting-edge cyber tools to better intercept Hezbollah’s cellphones and other communications, and created new front-line teams to ensure the rapid transfer of valuable information to the Israeli military and air force.
“Israel has also begun flying more drones and a state-of-the-art satellite over Lebanon to continuously photograph Hezbollah strongholds and document even the slightest changes to buildings that could, for example, reveal weapons depots,” the newspaper reported. Israeli fighter jets have been bombing hundreds of targets in Lebanon for several weeks and have killed practically the entire leadership of Hezbollah, except for Nasrallah.
In mid-September, the Israelis surprised the members of this movement with an unprecedented attack on hundreds of their pagers and then radios, the explosions killed 42 people and injured thousands more. Hezbollah members, on the instructions of Hassan Nasrallah, began to use pagers for communication instead of cell phones, which were compromised by the Jewish secret services.
Perhaps that is why Nasrallah, who had been very cautious until then, made the mistake of his life on Friday evening when he convened the meeting in his Beirut bunker. “Given the distrust of all electronic devices, a face-to-face meeting may have been the only way to discuss the situation with close associates,” the British newspaper The Guardian stated in its analysis.
Video: Death of Hezbollah leader brings tears to Middle East (30/09/2024)
Hezbollah leader’s death sparks tears in Lebanon and Middle East | Video: Associated Press