Israel: Embarrassing Revelations

[Valin]

StrategyPage

May 3, 2022:

It was recently revealed (by Israeli media and an Iranian opposition group) that Mossad and Shin Bet (domestic intelligence) personnel had gone to Iran last year. There they seized and questioned Mansour Rasouli, a member of Quds Force Unit 840, which carries out assassinations overseas. Rasouli admitted that he had been assigned to arrange the assassination of an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, an American general officer stationed in Germany and a journalist in France. The IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) was providing him with $150,000 to plan the killings and another million dollars if all three subjects were killed. Rasouli planned to hire contract killers via his contacts in drug smuggling gangs.

Audio, and later video, of key portions of the interrogation were leaked. Rasouli confessed because his interrogators already knew a lot about the plot. He was released and the Israeli interrogators left Iran. Rasouli and his IRGC superiors called off the assassinations because they knew the interrogation had been recorded, the targets had been alerted, and had received additional security. There was an understanding that, if Iran backed off on these killings, the Israelis would remain silent about the interrogation. Why this evidence was leaked now may have something to do with the Israeli opposition to American willingness to revive the 2015 sanctions treaty, but also a modification of the terms to make it easier for Iran to develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. Billions of dollars in frozen accounts would be returned to Iran and, if the Americans went ahead with taking the Iranian IRGC and its Quds Force off the list of known terrorists, there would be a lot more violence in the Middle East. Iran saw the 2015 treaty suspended by the Americans in 2018 because of Iranian cheating. Then came the 2020 American presidential elections, which put into power a new president seemingly determined to change American policies towards Iran and ignore Arab Oil states complaints about Iranian threats and attacks on them. This has driven many Gulf oil states into an economic alliance with Russia to drive up the price of oil. This policy makes it easier for Iran to smuggle more of its heavily discounted oil to customers. That plan survived the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and even more economic sanctions. Opposition from the Arabs and American voters is having an impact and the revival of the 2015 treaty may not happen. Otherwise Israel has made it clear it will carry out attacks on Iranian targets key to nuclear and ballistic missile development and production. The Arab Oil States will cooperate, and continue refusing to increase production to lower world oil prices.

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