It was the first public acknowledgment of Israel’s role in the operation.
Israel’s former military intelligence chief says country was involved US airstrike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, It was the first public acknowledgment of Israel’s role in the operation.
Soleimani leads the elite Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and helped organize Iran’s involvement with paramilitary groups abroad. He was killed in a US drone strike on Baghdad airport in January 2020, an incident that threatened to drag countries into full-blown conflict.
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A week after the airstrike, NBC News reported that Israeli intelligence helped confirm the details of Soleimani’s flight from Damascus to Baghdad. Earlier this year, a yahoo news reported that Israel had “access to Soleimani’s numbers” and passed that intelligence to the United States.
But Major General Tamir Heyman, the now retired general who led military intelligence until October, appears to be the first officer to confirm Israel’s involvement.
Mr Heyman’s comments were published in the November issue of a Hebrew-language magazine closely affiliated with Israel’s intelligence services. The interview was conducted in late September, a few weeks before his retirement from the military. The authors wrote that Mr Heyman began the interview by talking about the US airstrike that killed Soleimani, but in which Israeli intelligence played a part.
“The assassination of Soleimani was an achievement, because our main enemies, in my view, are Iranians,” Heyman told the magazine. He said there were “two significant and significant killings during my tenure” as the army’s intelligence chief.
“The first, as I have already recalled, is Qasim Soleimani – it is rare to find someone senior who is the architect, strategist and operator of a combat force – it is rare,” he said. Mr Heyman called Soleimani an “Iranian trench train engine” in neighboring Syria.
Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria over the past decade, but rarely comment on them publicly. Israel, however, has said it has targeted weapons bases bound to an Iranian-backed force and Iran’s proxy, the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah.
Mr Heyman said the Israeli strikes had succeeded in “stopping Iran’s attempt to take root in Syria”. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Mr Heyman’s comments.
The interview was published as world powers and Iran were engaged in talks to reach a new deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program. The previous deal, struck in 2015, was settled after the United States unilaterally withdrew in 2018 and reimposed severe economic sanctions on Iran.
On Wednesday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was due to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Jerusalem this week to “discuss a range of issues of strategic importance to US-Israel bilateral relations, including the threat posed by Iran,” the National Security Council spokeswoman Emily Horn said.
Israel considers Iran its regional enemy and says it will do everything possible to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
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