Israel has foiled an Iranian plot to assassinated an Israeli diplomat and a U.S. general. The Israeli intelligence agency Mossad thwarted the plan to kill the high-profile targets by detaining an operative of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Israeli media reported Saturday.
The hitjob planned by the IRGC included three targets in multiple countries: an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, a U.S. general stationed in Germany, and a journalist reporting from France, the Israeli sources confirm.
The plot was foiled based on a confession of an IRGC operative interrogated by the Mossad inside Iran, showing Israeli intelligence agency’s capability to strike at the heart of Iranian terrorist operation. “The Mossad spy agency detained and questioned a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in Iranian territory for his alleged involvement in an attempt to assassinate an Israeli diplomat in Turkey,” The Times of Israel reported Saturday.
According to Israeli media reports, at least one arrest was made in an unnamed European country in connection with the terror plot. The assassinations plot was being handled by the Quds Forces, the IRGC’s foreign terrorist wing.
The Israeli news website Ynet News reported the details of foiled Iranian plot:
The Mossad intelligence agency recently thwarted an Iranian assassination attempt on an employee of the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul, Israeli sources confirmed on Saturday.According to London-based news channel Iran International, the elite Quds Force of Iran’s powerful paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) “has commissioned one of its agents to assassinate an Israeli employee of the country’s consulate in Istanbul.”Citing diplomatic sources, the outlet said that the hitman was also supposed to target a senior U.S. general in Germany and a journalist in France.The operative is reportedly a member of Quds Force’s Unit 840 — a secretive unit in charge of planning and executing extraterritorial operations against Western and Iranian opposition targets. He is said to be held in an unnamed European country.According to the report, the suspect confessed to having received $150,000 for the preparations for the assassinations and would receive a further $1 million once the hitjob is completed.
The revelation comes amid media reports suggesting that President Joe Biden’s administration — in a bid to close the Iran nuclear deal — is seriously considering the removal of the IRGC from the list of international terrorist organization, reversing a decision taken by President Donald Trump. The Biden White House was “considering removing Iran’s Revolutionary Guards from its foreign terrorist organization blacklist in return for Iranian assurances about reining in the elite force,” the Reuters reported on March 16.
In January 2020, President Trump dealt a serious blow to Iran’s global terrorist network when he ordered the airstrike that killed IRGC-Quds Forces chief Qasem Soleimani near Baghdad.
After 12 months of European Union-brokered talks, the Biden White House has failed to make any headway in restoring the flawed 2015 nuclear deal. President Biden’s abandoning of the Trump-era policy of Maximum Pressure has allowed Iran to increase the stockpile of near-weapons grade uranium and enhance its nuclear weapons capabilities.
In the past year, Israel’s Mossad has foiled several Iranian plots aimed at Israeli and U.S. nationals across the world, including a 2021 attempted targeting of a U.S. delegation in Bogota, Colombia.
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