On November 27, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the chief scientist in charge of Iran’s nuclear weapons research and development program, was assassinated outside Tehran when his car was suddenly fired upon on the road, killing him with several bullets.
The Iranian foreign minister gnashed his teeth, claiming that Israel had orchestrated this “shameful and cowardly act. This may be the next major blow to Iran since the U.S. beheaded Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps leader Suleimani earlier this year. Fakhrizadeh is widely regarded as the father of Iran’s nuclear weapons program because he was the head of the country’s nuclear weapons development program, AMAD, for more than 20 years. He is also the only nuclear scientist named by the International Atomic Energy Agency in its Final Assessment of Iran’s Nuclear Program, published in 2015.
Of course, no one needs an introduction to know that a person on the assassination list of the famous Mossad is no insignificant figure. Iran, which has been pursuing nuclear weapons research since the 1980s, has repeatedly threatened to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. As a result, the scientists in charge have been accidentally killed at every critical moment. Four Iranian nuclear scientists had already been assassinated by Mossad between 2010 and 2012 – being a patriotic scientist for the Godfathers is really a precarious business. The Mossad was also responsible for the November 2011 “Modalas Missile Base Explosion” that killed 17 Iranian technicians and derailed the country’s missile development program.
The Mossad, known as “Israel’s Intelligence and Special Missions Directorate”, has a long history. The Mossad has a short history, having been established only in 1951, and its main mission is to gather intelligence and carry out assassinations abroad. As a rising star in the intelligence community, the Mossad was soon recognized as one of the world’s top four spies, along with the CIA, MI6, and the Soviet KGB.
In 1961, Mossad agents entered Argentina with fake passports and found Eichmann, who had been in hiding for years, through careful comparison. In the end, they kidnapped Eichmann, drugged him, and then, through the use of forged medical records, brought him back to Israel for trial and sent him to the gallows.
What made the Mossad famous was the familiar “plagues” that followed the Munich tragedy – 11 Israeli athletes at the Olympics were killed by the Palestinian “Black September” After being murdered by terrorists, Mossad returned the favor by setting up multiple assassination teams to hunt down and kill ten Black September terrorists around the world in connection with the tragedy. It wasn’t until the 11th assassination in Warsaw, Poland, where the target was shot five times and survived, that the international backlash ended. During the nine-year-long assassination campaign, Mossad agents used shootings, poisonings, beauty tricks, car bombs, bed bombs, phone bombs, and other tricks that were even better than those used by James Bond in the movies.
For example, in Beirut, Lebanon, to assassinate Salama, the chief planner of Black September, the Mossad used a beautiful agent, Penelope, disguised as a PLO supporter, to approach Salama and get information about his whereabouts, and finally killed him with a car bomb; in Paris, France, to assassinate Hamshari, the PLO representative, the Mossad used a car bomb to kill him. Mossad agents planted a remote-controlled bomb in their home telephones, which detonated and killed Hamshari when he answered the phone to confirm his identity; during the assassination of Abadheir in Cyprus, Mossad explosives experts developed a bed bomb, which triggers a pressure switch when a person lies down and is detonated remotely by agents outside ……
One of Mossad’s finest masterpieces was the “Chocolate Assassination” of 1976, when the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Wadiye Haddad, masterminded the shocking Air France hijacking. In an almost perfect plan to rescue the Jewish passengers on board, Israel managed to rescue most of them in Uganda. But Haddad, the mastermind behind the plan, fled to Baghdad, Iraq, where he went into hiding. The Mossad tracked Haddad down over time, turned on those close to him, and sent him out with a custom-made box of premium Belgian chocolates poisoned with his fondness for chocolate. This chronic poison does not kill immediately, but induces leukemia-like symptoms. Haddad died six months later, and for a long time the outside world thought it was an illness.
This kind of stealthy tactic was taken to its extreme in the January 2010 assassination of Hamas chief Mabhouh. Eleven Mossad operatives flew in from different countries as tourists with fake passports from Britain, France, Germany, and Ireland to rendezvous in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where the target was hiding. They took only five hours to poison the target, who died of a heart attack, without a trace, and even managed to conceal it from the autopsy team. Then they left. It wasn’t until the Dubai police found something strange on the hotel’s surveillance system that they suspected it was an assassination, but they still don’t know what kind of poison it was.
In order to avoid attracting attention and harming the innocent, the Mossad has mostly chosen quiet assassinations of its targets, but occasionally, to deter terrorists, it has opted for “explicit” assassinations, as in this case of Iranian nuclear scientists. For example, in April 1988, in order to take out PLO general Abu Gerhard, Mossad agents infiltrated Tunisia and used high-tech jamming devices to cut off all communication signals in the target’s area, then broke into the house and fired 52 shots at Gerhard from a dozen snipers. In 2004, a helicopter launched three missiles in a public place to blast Hamas’ spiritual leader Hassine to pieces. His successor, Rantisi, was similarly chased by missiles after only 25 days in office. The same deterrent was used to hunt down and kill most of his successors.
To this day, look at the terrorists who used to speak with such bravado, who still dare to show their faces and speak out?
A quote from the Talmud is said to be the operating credo of the Mossad: “If someone wants to kill you, he must strike first.”
According to Israeli journalist Ron Bergman, who launched “Strike First: The Secret History of Israeli Assassinations” in January 2018, the Mossad has carried out more than 2,300 targeted assassinations. Among the well-documented ones are the 2008 death of Lebanese Hezbollah head Mughniyeh by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria; the 2010 death of Hamas weapons transport executive Bahuh, who was asphyxiated by a pillow in a Dubai hotel; the 2013 shooting of Hezbollah military commander Rakchis in Beirut, Lebanon; and the 2016 death of Tunisian engineer Zouari, who built drones for Hamas. Perish …… is the mastermind behind all these actions, and it is Mossad.
Of course, there are many cases of Mossad’s actions, such as the “plagues of God” in the case of misidentification and excessive noise, which caused some innocent bystanders. Although the Israeli government paid compensation, the Mossad’s reputation was damaged and it came under great pressure. But the Mossad serves Israel’s national security rather than the world’s reputation, and outsiders’ opinions may not change their intentions relative to their contributions to Israel.
Whether the Mossad’s pre-emptive and ruthless assassination is useful or not, Israel’s development path over the past decades in the Middle East, where it is surrounded by powerful enemies, may be the most powerful answer. The fact that the PLO, Hamas, and Hezbollah …… have declined one after another, and no longer dare to make a move in the Middle East, is clear evidence of this. There is no point in talking about procedural justice and moral restraint when the terrorists only understand bullets and fear them. To be sure, the United States in recent years, a change in style, began to vigorously promote “three feet above the drone” decapitation strategy, a lot of motivation from the Israeli demonstration effect.
Of course, one can imagine that Iran’s verbal barrage will continue as usual, with the tacit and explicit support of certain countries, and their calls for the obliteration of Israel and the defeat of the United States will certainly continue under the blood flag, but the world will probably only respond with more and more slaps.
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