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Who really killed Hezbollah commander Mustafa Badreddine?
Here's why:
though Hezbollah usually is quite prompt and forthright when it's commanders have been assassinated by Israelis in the past, this time is different. It's hard to know why.
But I have a few theories:
I've been reading the
Twitter timeline of Elijah Magnier, who is one of the most astute observers of both Hezbollah and the Syrian conflict.
He believes the assignment of blame to Syrian rebels is deliberate disinformation. I'm inclined to agree.
Israel has assassinated as much of the top Hezbollah leadership as it can over the years. It killed Abbas Musawi, the top leader who preceded Hassan Nasrallah. It assassinated Imad Mugniyeh and later, his son.
It's also assassinated Syrian generals and IRG commanders in Syria. That's why
you shouldn't believe the nonsense the world media offers about Israel's alleged neutrality in the Syria conflict.
When someone as senior as Mustafa Badreddine is assassinated, it doesn't happen by coincidence and
not via an artillery shell.
It's a deliberate, targeted assassination - well-planned and executed with sophisticated weaponry. There is only one power in the region capable of doing this, and with a history of doing it in the past:
Israel.
By the way, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights noted that there had been
no artillery shelling of the airport for days before the assassination there.
Magnier adds another tantalizing piece of information: that only
30 minutes before his murder,
Badreddine met with Iran's top IRG commander
, Qassem Soleimani in the same location where he died. If so, whoever killed the Hezbollah commander likely knew Soleimani was there and chose not to kill him. If Israel did it, the reason would be clear:
killing Iran's top military commander would necessitate a huge Iranian response. It would threaten to destroy the Iran nuclear deal at the heart of Barack Obama's legacy. If the U.S. knew about the plans for this attack (and given the NSA's penetration of foreign intelligence services, including Israel's, that's entirely possible),
it would warn Israel not to kill Soleimani. But it would not care about Badreddine, since he and Mugniyeh were instrumental in attacks against U.S. interests in Lebanon in 1982. In assassinating Osama bin Laden, Obama has shown not just willingness, but
eagerness to murder Islamists who've killed Americans. In fact, it's the worst aspect of the outgoing president's legacy.
Comment: EU countries are starting to wake up to the dangers of a reality that Washington is hell bent on creating.
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