Mossad

By Teymoor Nabili in Middle East on January 12th, 2011
Photo by EPA

Must step away from Haiti issues for a moment to highlight a couple of very interesting comments made about Iran this week.

First, the outgoing head of Israel's spy agency Mossad poured some cold water on Bibi's favourite trope, saying Israel should not attack Iran because "Iran won't reach its nuclear capabilities before 2015".  

Fox News described the comment as "sabotaging policy".

But perhaps more significant was a comment made later in the week by the new head of the IAEA.

Yukio Amano, the man hand picked by Washington to replace Mohamed el Baradei and turn the screws on Iran over its nuclear programme, has rather unexpectedly forgotten the key element of the approved script.

He told the German paper Der Spiegel:

Tags: Haiti, Mossad
By Dan Nolan in Middle East on February 25th, 2010
Photo from Reuters

Anyone who still thinks Mossad WASN'T responsible for the murky murder mystery playing out in Dubai must be feeling decidedly lonely right now.

Sure the Israeli media still find it hard to believe that Mossad could be "so irresponsible as to dispatch nearly 30 agents and to expose an entire select operational unit on one assassination operation".

But the latest revelations from Dubai Police are pretty hard to ignore. They've now found 22 fraudulent passport-holders loitering around the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel on the day Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabouh was murdered. (They claim the other 4 suspects were only involved in the planning and preparation.)

By Marwan Bishara in Imperium on February 18th, 2010
Photo from AFP

As the storm over the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh picks up momentum, I am not buying into the whole business of lack of competence and ambiguity.

I don't think the Israeli spy/killing agency - the Mossad is that sloppy, or Israel that lax.

True, Israel's mounting arrogance did lead to a number of security screw-ups over the years, and this could be such a repeat. But this operation looks more like a deliberate act of arrogance than not.

If it was merely a question of mistakes or failures, the Mossad would have had to go out of its way to behave so unprofessionally or so incautiously.

Nor do I buy the theory that a less competent foreign agency or group has carried out the operation in a way that implicates Israel. That's just adding insult to insolence.

Generally, assassinations carry double meanings. The first is answered by 'why' and the second 'how'.

By Clayton Swisher in Middle East on February 17th, 2010
Photo from AFP
Update : It is not clear whether this was passport or identity theft.  The 7 dual Israeli citizens claim their passports were never stolen or "lent" to anyone else.
 
As I earlier blogged, the passports used by the alleged killers of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh would be a key piece of forensic evidence.  I must first admit some bias in my thinking as I got some experience investigating passport fraud in my first three years out of college. 
 

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