The New York Times: Israel knew Nasrallah’s location months… Who was the spy?
The New York Times quoted three senior officials as saying that Israel had known where Hassan Nasrallah was for months but decided to assassinate him last week because there were fears that Nasrallah would disappear again.
The order to attack Nasrallah’s hideout was issued on Friday, and Israeli war planes dropped 83 one-ton bombs each on the place within minutes.
The Hezbollah leader’s hideout was said to be an underground bunker in a very crowded Beirut neighborhood, built under four multi-story buildings, and in fact, this place was the meeting place of Hezbollah leaders.
According to French intelligence official, the Israeli intelligence services “definitely had a spy on the ground”.
He added, “The speed of the Israeli army and Mossad’s action and the confirmation of his immediate death indicates that someone from within Hezbollah cooperated with them, and this operation and the operation to blow up the pagers were successful thanks to the cooperation of someone from within the organization with them”.
A former Mossad official also says that the Israeli army doesn’t trust the photos.
There must be a human agent who confirmed that Nasrallah entered the targeted building, or a super Israeli spy or a local agent who wanted to settle the score with Nasrallah.
“Many people didn’t like him… There was extreme pessimism in Hezbollah, because they wanted to know at any cost who provided the information to the Israelis,” he added.
According to the French intelligence expert, Nasrallah’s presence at the site may have been planned or directed by Israel.
“His presence at this meeting with high-ranking commanders and a senior Iranian military officer was no coincidence,” he says.
It’s likely that Hezbollah’s leadership received counter-intelligence that Israel was planning to attack Beirut and wanted to launch a ground attack on Lebanon.
“Israel did the same thing with the second man in Hamas… The story was that they wanted to bring Nasrallah out of hiding”.
