Mossad agents go racing by, uttering their own Hebrew-accented “Beep Beep. Writes Hugh Fitzgerald
By now we are all used to hearing of Mossad’s deeds of derring-do inside Iran, which have done so much to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. The Mossad has been throwing spanners into the works of Iran’s nuclear project ever since 2010, when its Stuxnet computer worm managed to infect Iranian computers, that in turn directed more than 1,000 of Iran’s centrifuges to spin out of control so that they destroyed themselves. That was followed, from 2010 to 2012, by the assassination, one by one, of four of Iran’s top nuclear scientists. Then came the daring raid in 2018 by 20 Mossad agents, in the middle of the night, in the middle of Tehran, to find – behind 32 steel doors that the Mossad raiders had to blow up — Iran’s entire nuclear archive of 100,000 documents, and then to smuggle all of it back to Israel, where analysis provided conclusive evidence of Iran’s massive deceptions about its nuclear project.
Then in 2020, Mossad saboteurs managed to destroy most of a centrifuge plant at Natanz. The Iranians immediately set to work to build a replacement plant at Natanz – but this one was built 50 meters underground, which the Iranians assumed Israeli bombs would not be able to reach. But bombs from above were not used. That plant, too, was promptly blown up in 2021 – again, through sabotage, not a cyberattack of an airstrike. When it comes to Iran, the Mossad agents neither slumber nor sleep. Finally, at the end of 2020, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s most important nuclear scientist, was assassinated while driving in the outskirts of Tehran.
But the Mossad does more than slow down Iran’s nuclear program. It is intent on foiling Iranian plots against those non-Iranians the Islamic Republic wishes, for various reasons, to eliminate.
A report on its latest deed of derring-do, when Mossad agents managed to question, in his own house, an Iranian citizen – inside Iran – who was in charge of a plot to kill an Israeli diplomat, an American general, and a French journalist, is here: “Mossad operates in Iran, foils IRGC plot to kill Israeli diplomat, US general,” Jerusalem Post, April 30, 2022
The Mossad – operating in Iran – apprehended and interrogated an Iranian national who was leading a plot to kill an Israeli diplomat and a US general, sources have confirmed.
An audio recording released on Saturday showed a photo of Mansour Rasouli admitting he had been ordered to establish a cell to assassinate a worker at the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, a US general stationed in Germany and a journalist in France.
Rasouli was arrested and questioned in Iran, a rarity as the Mossad regularly operates in conjunction with foreign intelligence services to thwart attacks but almost always from outside the Islamic Republic.
How was Mansour Rasouli seized in his house by Mossad agents without other Iranians noticing? He had been instructed to establish a cell abroad, with its operatives prepared to strike in Turkey, Germany, and France – given the importance of the task entrusted to him, one would have thought that he merited being given round-the-clock protection by Iranian security. The Iranians, after all, should by now have learned the lesson of having five of their top nuclear scientists assassinated by Mossad because of insufficient security. But it seems that they did not.
Rassouli was interrogated in his own house. No family members were apparently at home, no neighbors noticed anything wrong. How did those Mossad agents extract the information from him, apparently without undue difficulty, if not by threatening his life? They need only have shown him photographs of the five Iranian scientists who were assassinated, and suggested that if he failed to cooperate, the same fate awaited him. That would have been enough.
Officials said the planned attack shows the threat the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps poses is not isolated [sic] to Israel and needs to be confronted accordingly.
Only one of the three intended victims was an Israeli. The American general was targeted as payback for the killing of the IRGC head, General Qassem Soleimani. The French journalist who was to be killed is not named, but I suspect he is Eric Zemmour, the well-known anti-Islamic journalist turned presidential candidate. And the Israeli working at the consulate in Istanbul was chosen to be murdered as a way to remind Israel that its diplomats are nowhere safe, and to convey to both Israel and Turkey Iran’s opposition to the warming of Israel-Turkey relations that began a year ago.
News of the thwarted plot was first reported by London-based Iran International on Saturday….
Iran International is run by Iranians in exile who have made clear their support for Israel’s efforts both to stymie Iran’s nuclear program, and to weaken the Islamic Republic in any way it can.
Imagine Iran’s enhanced prestige in the Islamic world if it managed to kill an American general in revenge for the killing of Qassem Soleimani, and at the same time did away with such a celebrated “enemy of Islam” as Eric Zemmour? And in addition,
The planned hits were organized by a member of Quds Force’s Unit 840 stationed in Europe, who was paid $150,000 to “prepare for the assassinations” by using his connections to various European drug lords.
Unit 840 is a relatively secretive operational unit that organizes terrorist infrastructure outside Iran against Western targets and opposition groups, according to the IDF.
Defense officials said the failed assassinations join a long list of similar plots, including recent ones in Kenya and Colombia.
Unit 840 has clearly not been “secretive” enough, it turns out, because Israel has managed not just in this case, but in many others, to uncover and foil its schemes. In Turkey, Germany, and France today, in Kenya and Colombia yesterday, in Senegal, Ghana, and Tanzania, the day before yesterday, Mossad has always managed to foil the schemes of Unit 840.
Turkish, British and American reports over the last few years have accused Iran of using major international crime organizations to help advance its goals abroad, which include carrying out terrorist plots. According to reports, Iranian intelligence has employed the Zindashti cartel, headed by heroin kingpin Naji Sharifi Zindashti, to assassinate or abduct Iranian dissidents living in Turkey since 2015.…
Iranian intelligence works – quite contentedly, it seems — with criminal organizations, drug kingpins in up to their necks in the smuggling of heroin and cocaine. Muslims must not ingest drugs, but there is no reason why they cannot be drug dealers for “the most vile of created beings,” the world’s Infidels. In fact, spreading drugs among the Infidel population can be seen as another useful weapon of Jihad.
“It is a part of our noble responsibility to spoil the Western society with drugs”. With these words, Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen, a Bangladeshi food firm tycoon who had been incriminated for trafficking large quantities of heroin, worth a few hundred million dollars, into Great Britain, justified his drug smuggling operations. The Chairman of BD Foods Ltd, which supplied spices and other food products to UK, was sourcing the heroin mainly from Afghanistan via the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, where he maintained offices. His statement exemplifies a widely supported stance of a religious-based justification of the opium trade. Similarly, the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid published an interview with an Afghan official where the latter asserted that: “Opium is permissible because it is consumed by Kafirs (unbelievers) in the West and not by Muslims or Afghanis.”…
The Iranians know that the drug lord Zindashti, far from being shunned for his drug trafficking, is respected for doing Islamically sanctioned work in selling heroin to the Kaffirs. Let me repeat what Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen, a leading Bangladeshi businessman said, “It is a part of our noble responsibility to spoil the Western society with drugs.” There is nothing wrong with working with Zindashti, or with any other drug lord, who helps to “spoil the Western society with drugs.”
Iran is trying to make it more dangerous and difficult for Israeli businessmen to work in the eastern Mediterranean – specifically, in Cyprus, Greece, and Turkey. Murdering a few would discourage a great many other Israeli businessmen from operating in those particular countries. Just look at how many Israeli businesses pulled out of Kenya after the terrorist attack in Mombasa in 2002, when both the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel, and a plane belonging to Israel’s Arkia Airlines, were struck.
In holding hostage, and interrogating, inside Iran, Mansour Rasouli, the Iranian organizer of the triple-murder plot that has now been foiled, Mossad has no doubt won the gratitude of the Americans and the French, as well as of its own people. The constant foiling of Iranian plots by the constantly vigilant Mossad puts one in mind of the American cartoon about the Road-Runner, who always manages to escape the fiendish plotting by Wile E. Coyote to capture him, or sometimes, to blow him up with the Acme Company’s deadliest explosives. But instead it is Wile E. Coyote who is blown up, or falls into a deep canyon, or walks off a cliff. And at that point of total despair for Wile E. Coyote, the Road Runner runs swiftly by, in a kind of victory lap, uttering his famous “Beep Beep.” Hoist by their own petard are the Iranian plotters like Mansour Rousuli, just like Wile E. Coyote, while Mossad agents go racing by, uttering their own Hebrew-accented “Beep Beep.”
