Israeli Targeted Killing of Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh
By Trish Schuh Feb 21, 2008 Esquire Online

BEIRUT, Lebanon- It was clear something big was about to break in the war on terror. In the weeks before "the world's most wanted terrorist," Hezbollah's Imad Mughniyeh was assassinated, half a dozen internet/telecommunications cables had been cut to countries through out the middle east. Or "sabotaged" as the UN suggested.

Similar types of communications interception often precede the launch of surprise military operations as a way to stop information leaks.

Telecommunications to all countries in the region had been affected except America's main allies, Israel and Iraq. For a short period, Hezbollah's main sponsor, Iran, was completely blacked out. Then a few days before Mughniyeh's killing, America sent anti-missile warships to the Israeli port of Haifa. Soon Patriot missiles that could knock out Hezbollah's incoming Katushya rockets were being deployed across northern Galilee. If Hezbollah retaliated for Mughniyeh's death, the US and Israel were ready.

In Lebanon, America's primary spokesman, Walid Jumblatt, had escalated the war threats against Hezbollah: "If you think we are going to sit with our hands tied, then perhaps we have to burn everything. If you want chaos- then we welcome chaos. If you want war- then we welcome war. We have no problem with weapons or with rockets which we will launch on you!"

According to former Mossad officer Victor Ostrovsky, Jumblatt had been employed by the Mossad going back to the Lebanese civil war, and so his words held weight. In past months, Jumblatt had often condemned Mughniyeh, and had even gone so far as to call for car bombings in Damascus.

On the night Israel and America car bombed Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, the Hezbollah area of Mugniyeh's youth in south Lebanon was hit by an earthquake, and the shock waves shook deep into Israel. Rumors swirled that the demise of Mughniyeh, like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, commemorated Purim, the Jewish triumphal feast wherein Israel's enemies "meet justice."

The Jerusalem Post suggested something a bit more mundane: Mughniyeh's killing was to prevent planned Hezbollah retaliations after Israel's 2007 bombing of an alleged nuclear site in Deir Ez Zor, Syria by the IDF. This writer had been on assignment for Esquire, and was the only reporter to actually be in the oil hub of Deir Ez Zor at the time. I spoke to officials from Shell Oil who regularly monitor the area as part of ground operations. They stated that Shell's field instruments had detected no rise in radiation levels after the IDF hit. The charges of Syrian nuclear activity at the site? "Pure bullshit," one of them told me.

But Mughniyeh had been in the crosshairs long before the recent IDF strike on Syria. The Mossad said his death "took years of planning." America's CIA had also been pursuing him for decades as the mastermind of Hezbollah's military wing. In 2002 they put a $25 million dollar price tag on his life. America held Mughniyeh responsible for terrorist acts committed against France, Israel and the US, during the height of the Israeli occupation of Lebanon in the 1980's and early 90's.

Backed by Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mughniyeh was accused of planning the bombings of the US and French Embassies in Beirut, and the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. He was also blamed for the infamous 1983 US Marine Barracks bombing that killed 241 American servicemen. None of the cases have officially been solved.

Sheikh Khudr Nur Ad Dine of Hezbollah's Political Ruling Council denied to me any Hezbollah role in the crimes. "More than once Hezbollah leaders have denied this. Beirut was filled with many groups. Some with Islamic names were hostage takers... At the time, we didn't operate in Beirut. We weren't involved in the civil war, only the resistance in the south against Israel," he told me.

Working doubly for Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, Mughniyeh was wanted for the kidnapping, torture and death of US government figures such as CIA station chief William Buckley, Lt. Col. William Richard Higgins, and the hijacking of a T.W.A. flight in which an American marine was shot. Mughniyeh was also blamed for rampant hostage-taking during the civil war, especially the kidnapping and 7 year confinement of AP reporter Terry Anderson.

Mughniyeh's invisibility and elusiveness were legendary. He never gave interviews or photo ops, and the one picture circulated of him was sometimes thought to have been of someone else altogether. Press reports claimed Mughniyeh had even had plastic surgery to disguise his facial features.

I spoke with one of the few journalists ever to see Mughniyeh, veteran middle east correspondent Robert Fisk, who had traveled to Tehran to appeal for the release of his colleague, Terry Anderson. "Mughniyeh's hand shake was like a vise grip and he wouldn't let go", he said. "His defining trait was that he was a very, very angry man. He also had this absolute confidence in his own view of the world. Almost like George Bush in his self-righteousness."

But Fisk thought that Mughniyeh could not have committed all the acts attributed to him. "Some of the operations, he was too young to have had the expertise to carry out. He was only 19 or 20 at the time. Others- like being two places at once- were a physical impossibility."

Ironically, Fisk's assessment would likely be an unwelcome downgrade of Mughniyeh's "accomplishments" to the Shias who turned out for his funeral in south Beirut this week. Despite sheets of rain, tens of thousands stood outdoors for hours to hear Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah eulogize "the life, work and sacrifice of Martyr Hajj Radwan."

Afterwards, they marched unbowed by rain or mud through an impoverished neighborhood still smashed by the Israeli war of 2006. Flashes of sporadic gunfire erupted in spontaneous tribute to Mughniyeh. Women threw rice on the passing casket from balconies high above the street for "Groom Mughniyeh" who died a martyr, and who was now being wedded in Paradise to 72 virgins.

One mourner proudly pointed out to me a wide, empty gash in the ground. "That used to be an apartment over there. When Hezbollah caught dozens of Arab spies marking buildings for the Israelis to bomb, they put them in the basement... and let the Israelis bomb them."

At one of the memorial services, I asked Muhgniyeh's oldest daughter Fatima about the ethics of killing 271 marines in their sleep. "America was invading our country, like Israel... my father's duty was to defend Lebanon" she said. "Now they've killed my dad. But I and my husband and my brothers and my father's students will carry on to victory."

The sign carried by the funerary color guard echoed her threat: "Don't worry. This account will not be closed until the killing of Hajj Imad is avenged."