No Retirement Home for Terrorists

In the late evening of February 12, 2008, a car bomb exploded in a residential area of Damascus Syria killing the vehicles occupant and a passerby. The occupant of the vehicle was none other than Imad Mugniyah. I posted an article about the man back in October because of his reemergence in Lebanon training future jihadists for further attacks on Israel and possible attacks against U.S. targets should the U.S. engage Iran militarily. Currently the discussion of the Mugniyah assassination has turned to a classic game of ‘whodunit’.

Perhaps the most likely candidate, on the surface anyhow, would be Israel. While Mugniyah has killed many Israelis in the past it is more likely that Israel would have killed him to hinder the training effort currently underway by Hezbollah. The U.S. also had reasons for targeting Mugniyah, not the least of which was the 1983 attack in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. Marines. While some may argue that the U.S. is prevented from carrying out assassinations because of two executive orders signed by Presidents Ford and Reagan; the current authorization for the use of force passed by congress after the 9/11 attacks would give the President the leeway to pursue this action.

Two other possibilities also come to mind: France and Argentina. France is a possibility because they too lost 58 soldiers in the 1983 attack in Beirut and suffered additional attacks from Hezbollah within their borders. France has the connections in Syria as well as the moxie to pull off this type of attack. On the other hand Argentina also is a possible candidate, but in the end is unlikely. Mugniyah has been implicated in the AIMA attack in 1994 and the 1992 attack against the Israeli embassy in Argentina. Argentina recently released the final report on the AIMA bombing prompting Interpol to issue warrants for Mugniyah’s arrest as well as some Iranian intelligence operatives.

After the predator strike against al-Qaeda operatives that perpetrated the Cole bombing in Yemen, the U.S. is one of the more likely candidates. I currently do not have any evidence to support this, but it is possible that the assassination was orchestrated to put further pressure on Iran during ongoing talks over the future of Iraq. Regardless of who is responsible for this assassination one truth of terrorism still holds: There is no retirement home for terrorists.

The following is the October post on Mugniyah:

Back to the slaughter, Imad Mugniyah makes a comeback.

But did he ever really go away? Probably not, but the man has managed to keep a very low profile. Imad Mugniyah was mentioned in a previous posting as orchestrating the bombing of the Marine and the French Paratrooper barracks back in 1983, but he has done so much more. Mugniyah has been involved in the April 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon; the 1984 bombing of the U.S. Embassy annex in Lebanon; the 1985 hijacking of TWA Flight 847; numerous kidnappings of Westerners in Beirut throughout the 1980s; the 1992 and 1994 bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires; the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing; and the 2000 kidnappings of 3 Israeli soldiers in southern Lebanon and of Israeli Colonel Elchanan Tenenbaum, who was lured to Kuwait under false pretenses and then taken to the Hezbollah enclave in southern Lebanon. It is also possible that he was involved in the killing of U.S. Army Colonel William Buckley. My estimation is that he has been personally responsible for attacks killing over 480 people in his more high profile attacks. As such, he has been wanted by the FBI since 1985.

So why bring him up now? Unfortunately Mugniyah has shown up in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley training terrorists to strike at the U.S. should an attack on Iran take place. This man’s continued existence has bothered me for some time primarily because of the multiple Hezbollah cells that are present in the U.S., many of whom have more than likely been trained by Mugniyah. Mugniyah’s reemergence, if one can call it that, would prove to be a useful deterrent to a U.S. led attack on Iran. This man has managed to pull off difficult assignments in a short amount of time for both Hezbollah and Iranian intelligence, and a couple of suicide attacks in the U.S. would not be hard to imagine. In order to counter this move made by Iran it is necessary to once again directly target the man for assassination or capture. While this attempt may not be successful it could help disrupt the training of future jihadists. In fact, now would be a very good time since Hezbollah is still trying to rebuild its military wing that was severely hurt during the war with Israel just last year. In any case, it’s better late than never.