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Annons
Annons
Michael Ross: It’s clear that they do, and the CIA has got into it in a big way, too. But the world’s biggest assassin is not some Jason Bourne character; it’s a pudgy guy in a CIA flight suit in Nevada flying a drone, shooting missiles into Yemen and Pakistan. As such, I think to say that the top-tier intelligence services don’t have a role in all that is disingenuous.So did your old employer kill Mojtaba Ahmadi?
Unless he was involved in something we don’t know about that posed a really serious threat, it’s hard to imagine him being such a high-value target that he would warrant that kind of sensitive operation. It’s so tough to pull something like that off inside Iran – logistics, planning, cover, it’s all hard. You have to make sure the operation will have a huge impact, and I’m not sure this would have.There are two ways of doing it: You can send your own people in, which is dangerous, especially in Iran. Or you can train a bunch of nationals to carry out the operational work you want doing. You take them out of Iran to a neighbouring country and train them up for assassinations, or sabotage, or whatever.
Annons
It’s totally possible, but I think there’s a homegrown capability in Iran, whose genesis lies with Western intelligence services but is now capable of working alone. They probably decided to do these two operations – the sabotage and the killing of Ahmadi. Either alone or with someone from outside.
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Yeah, someone like that – dissidents. The Iranian regime is talking about "counter-revolutionaries", and they haven’t been quick to point the finger at Mossad, or the CIA, or whoever. When the nuclear scientist Roshan got blown up in Tehran last year they went through a pretty amusing list of people to blame – Mossad, the CIA, MI6 and then even the UN: it was "Let’s blame the whole world," basically. But this time they’re blaming counter-revolutionaries, which suggests they think it’s someone inside Iran.That’s not what the press are saying, but it's what my British spook contact said, too.
Well, great intelligence minds think alike.I guess so. What about in Dubai in 2011, when the Head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Mahmoud al-Mahout, was killed?
Yeah, it would be disingenuous to say my former employer wasn’t involved with that. Although the reports were strange: Dubai claimed about 30 people were involved, and Mossad would never use that many guys – that’s just crazy.
Annons
The action would have been to ride up on a motorcycle, shoot him and drive off, which is a very simple and effective way to get someone. That’s been done plenty of times. Look at Fathi Shaqaqi, the Head of the Islamic Jihad who was offed in Malta – that was exactly the same modus operandi.Ah, OK. How do you get someone into a country where they might not be welcome? Disguises and so on?
Yeah, you need a cover that will hold up to scrutiny at a border crossing. This is something we’ve been doing since Sir Francis Walsingham [the Queen's "spymaster" in the 1500s] was kicking around. Border crossings and false identities are just the bread and butter of foreign intelligence work. It’s pretty rare to do that in the case of Iran, though – it’s really hard. But I know there are top-tier intelligence services doing whatever’s necessary to thwart their nuclear weapons programme.Right. Does former Israeli President Rabin's old motto, "Fight terrorism as if there is no peace process; pursue peace as if there is no terrorism,” still hold true?
It’s not really a political question so much as achieving what you want to achieve; you need to know if the assassination is justified, but also that it’ll have a huge effect on the terrorists you’re after. Take Imad Mughniyeh, the godfather of Hezbollah and the arch terrorist, who was assassinated by a car bomb in Damascus in 2008. In cases like that, it really does degrade the organisation. Mossad and the CIA – and to a lesser extent MI6 – are on more of a war footing than they were in the past. The game has changed. The polite, gentlemanly era of the Cold War is over.
Annons
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Yeah, I worked with some CIA guys on that – we picked up three of the gentlemen who were behind it. So it was an interesting moment for me to see him get caught on Saturday. The guys we got were from the emergent Egyptian jihad – we got a tip off that they were in Azerbaijan and went there to facilitate their capture in Baku.And the simultaneous US raid in Somalia – were they there to whack the Shabaab leader Ikrima, or to catch him?
Catching a guy can be so hard, because you have to pull him out without getting into trouble. It’s a lot easier to just whack them. Having said that, I think if they knew where he was they could have just shot him with a drone, but then you don’t get confirmation of a kill. I’m on the fence, but I think it might have been a bin Laden situation: Catch him if you can, kill him if you can’t.Okay. Back in 2012, you wrote a tongue-in-cheek kill list of people you’d like offed. Who would you add to it now, in late 2013?
That’s a good one. Hmmm. I think I already put Qassam Soleimani [a commander in the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] on there, so I can’t choose him. It’s tough. Oh, I know, let’s have Mokhtar Belmokhtar, the crazy one-eyed guy [and military commander of al-Qaeda in in the Maghreb] in the Sahel. I don’t really need to add the Shabaab guy to my list – he seems to be on someone else’s.
Annons
Um, I can’t answer questions on that.Makes sense. Cheers, Michael!More about Israel and espionage:The Mysterious and Depressing Case of Prisoner XThe Americans Are Building a Top Secret Base in Israel Called Site 9/11Is Iran's New President Capable of Talking His Way to Peace with Israel