Mug shot

The Associated Press reported

One of the world’s most wanted and elusive terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed by a car bomb in Syria nearly 15 years after dropping almost entirely from sight. The one-time Hezbollah security chief was implicated in attacks that killed hundreds of Americans in Lebanon in the 1980s, a string of brutal kidnappings and bombings of Jewish sites in Argentina.The Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its top ally Iran accused Israel in the assassination, a charge denied by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s office.

The United States welcomed the death of Mughniyeh, who was indicted in the U.S. over the 1985 hijacking of a TWA airliner in which a U.S. Navy diver was killed. The FBI had put a $5 million bounty on Mughniyeh.

“The world is a better place without this man in it,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “One way or the other he was brought to justice.”

FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said the agency was waiting for confirmation of Mughniyeh’s death and its circumstances. “If this information proves true, it would be considered good news in the ongoing fight against terrorism,” he said.

Michael Ledeen gives his assessment of what Mughniyeh was involved in:

His bloody arms reached into South America, both in the creation of Hezbollah bases and in the murderous operations in Buenos Aires in the mid-nineties that led to his indictment by the Argentine Government. And I have no doubt that he was involved in setting up terror cells in the United States. Remember that he was both the operational chieftain of Hezbollah and a high-ranking officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Qods Force.

Elder of Ziyon reports on Mughniyah’s ties to Fatah, including his possible involvement in the Karine A affair and observes:

So the same “moderate” leaders of the PA were intimately involved in working together with this master terrorist – and murderer of hundreds of Americans as well as Argentine Jews.

The Counter-terrorism Blog has more along these lines, specifically his role with Force 17:

Mughniyah cut his teeth as a teenage gunman with Force 17 in Beirut in the late 1970s. Mughniyah’s links to Fatah are also not ancient history. While Hezbollah’s growing with relationships with the Palestinian Islamist groups has been well reported, Hezbollah has also worked to build connections within the ostensibly secular Fatah. Force 17 officers founded the very first Hezbollah cells in the Gaza and the West Bank. The strategic significance of the Palestinian terror groups moving into Iranian orbit should not be underestimated.

The AP makes the following observation:

Mughniyeh’s death was the latest in a series of blows to major terror figures in recent weeks. Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida leader, was killed in late January by a missile fired by a U.S. drone in western Pakistan. This week, Pakistani security forces critically wounded and captured Mansour Dadullah, a top Taliban figure, in a firefight also near the Afghan border.

Pajamas Media’s Meir Javedanfar looks at as another battle won against Iran:

The successful findings, tracking, and assassination of Mughniyeh come on the heels of a number of other major Western intelligence coups against Iran over the last several years.First was the elimination of Iran’s long-range Zilzal missiles by the Israeli air force, in the space of 30 minutes, during the 2006 Hezbollah-Israel war. These missiles, which were imported from Iran via Damascus, had been guarded carefully under the supervision of Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah intelligence operatives. The very fact that Israel was able to locate and eliminate them early on in the war showed that Iran and Hezbollah’s counter-intelligence operations were seriously compromised.

Then came the defection of General Ali Reza Asgari in March 2007. He was Iran’s former deputy defense minister and a senior contact man between Iran and Hezbollah. He was a highly valued Iranian asset. Despite that, Western intelligence agencies managed to recruit him and helped him defect while he was on a trip to Syria, without the Iranians being able to do much.

I was thinking along different lines, as is David Schenker

Mughniyah’s death raises some interesting issues. The fact that Mughniyah was killed in Damascus highlights the Asad regime’s increasing difficulties in protecting the terrorists they provide with “safe haven.” In 2004, another guest of the regime, Hamas leader Izzeddin Subhi Sheikh Khalil, was killed by a car bomb in Damascus. The Israelis bombed an Islamic Jihad training camp in 2003, buzzed Asad’s Latakia palace in 2006, and destroyed a presumed North Korean-supplied nuclear facility in 2007. As Mughniyah’s aunt told AFP earlier today, “We were shocked to learn that he was killed in Syria. We thought he was safe there.”In all of these cases, to put it mildly, the Syrian response has been remarkably restrained.

I was thinking more about the hit killing of Mughniyah, the destruction of the Syrian missiles and the destruction of the possible reactor building. If the reports about Israel having a mole in the nuclear facility were accurate and now this, it would suggest that Israel has rather advanced covert operations in Syria right now.

Noah Pollak also entertains the question, Did Israel do it? He doesn’t say conclusively but leans in that direction.

Daled Amos has an excellent roundup and wonders if this will lead to any questions about Sen. Obama’s campaign.

Finally, here are the thoughts of Lt. Col. Robin Higgins, widow of Col. Rich Higgins, one of the victims of Mughniyah.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.