Israel helped US track Qasem Soleimani using cell phone
Israel gave the US access to multiple cellphone numbers for former top Iranian official Qasem Soleimani to help enable his assassination in January 2020, Yahoo News reported on Saturday night. Soleimani was the former Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force chief.
The Jerusalem Post has previously reported that Israel’s
role in the assassination was far greater than had been revealed.
For example, according to foreign reports, Israel was
instrumental in keeping the idea of removing Soleimani from the playing board
despite resistance by some of the US defense establishment as well as tactical
assistance. Internal US debates are described in the Yahoo article.
Soleimani’s vehicle and a second accompanying vehicle were
destroyed by US drones after he flew into Iraq from Damascus.
According to Yahoo News, “in the six hours before Soleimani
boarded his flight from Damascus, the Iranian general switched cellphones three
times, according to a US military official.”
“In Tel Aviv, US Joint Special Operations Command liaisons
worked with their Israeli counterparts to help track Soleimani’s cellphone
patterns. The Israelis, who had access to Soleimani’s numbers, passed them off
to the Americans, who traced Soleimani and his current phone to Baghdad,” said
the report.
In addition, at an earlier date, “Israeli intelligence at
one point tipped off the CIA about a courier for Soleimani who would travel
outside Iran to pick up clean phones for the Quds Force leader and his inner
circle, recalled a former intelligence official. The CIA got wind that the
courier would visit a specific market in a Gulf country to procure these
devices, and sprang into action. The agency executed a complex supply chain
compromise, installing spyware on a set of phones that were seeded into the
marketplace used by Soleimani’s courier,” said the report.
Further, “The gambit worked, said the former official, and
the courier purchased at least one bugged phone that was then used by someone
who was often in the same room as Soleimani. But because Soleimani and other
Iranian leadership would often rotate their devices, and employ other measures
to avoid being surveilled, successes of this sort were fleeting, said former
officials,” stated Yahoo.
Other new revelations indicated that several Kurdish agents
on the ground at the Iraqi airport where the assassination took place had key
roles.
One Kurdish agent impersonated a ground controller; one
impersonated an official for receiving luggage and a third pretended to be an
Iraqi police officer to positively ID Soleimani as dead through photographic
and DNA evidence.
Israeli intelligence reportedly has deep penetration of
anti-Iranian Kurdish groups, though the US also has strong Kurdish ties.
In addition, the Yahoo report revealed that Us special
forces were on the ground and fired on a second car to get it to slow down
until it was also hit by a US drone overhead.
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