Report: CIA-Mossad Operation Killed Hezbollah Figure
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - The CIA and Israel's spy agency Mossad were behind an elaborate plot to kill Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh in a 2008 car bomb attack in Syria, the Washington Post has reported.
Citing former intelligence officials, the newspaper on Friday reported that US and Israeli spy agencies worked together to target Mughniyeh on February 12, 2008 as he left a restaurant in the Syrian capital, Damascus.
He was killed instantly by a car bomb planted in a spare tyre on the back of a parked car, which exploded shrapnel in a tight radius, the Post said.
The bomb, built by the United States and tested in the state of North Carolina, was triggered remotely by Mossad agents in Tel Aviv who were in communication with Central Intelligence Agency operatives on the ground in Damascus.
"The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute," a former US intelligence official told the newspaper.
The CIA declined to comment to the Post about the report.
According the newspaper, the authority to kill required a presidential finding by George W Bush. Several senior officials, including the attorney general, the director of national intelligence and the national security advisor, would have had to sign off on the order, it added.
