ISLAMABAD – NBC News has revealed details of Washington’s assassination ofprominent Iranian commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, saying theterrorist operation used Israeli intelligence and was run from the USCentral Command (CENTCOM) headquarters in Qatar.
According to the report, informants at the Damascus airport tipped off theCIA about the time the plane carrying the head of Iran’s Quds Force tookoff for Baghdad, where he was scheduled to meet Iraqi Prime MinisterAdel Abdul-Mahdi.
The report quoted two people with direct knowledge of the assassination andother American officials briefed on it as saying that “intelligence fromIsrael helped confirm the details” about General Soleimani’s flight onJanuary 3.
“Once the Cham Wings Airlines Airbus A320 landed, American spies at Iraq’smain airport, which houses US military personnel, confirmed its exactwhereabouts,” it said.
“Three American drones moved into position overhead, with no fear ofchallenge in an Iraqi airspace completely dominated by the US military.Each was armed with four Hellfire missiles.”
Various US officials watched as Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, thesecond-in-command of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), walked up aset of stairs to greet General Soleimani as he emerged from the airplane.
“CIA Director Gina Haspel was observing from agency headquarters inLangley, Virginia. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was watching fromanother location. Another feed was on view in the White House, butPresident Donald Trump was in Florida at the time,” it added.
The imagery, NBC News reported, showed the two commanders getting into asedan and the rest of the entourage climbing into a minivan.
The US drones followed as the vehicles began moving to exit the airportwhile signals intelligence specialists sought to hone in on the cellphonesof the occupants to confirm their identities, the report said.
Read Top Stories
“At US Central Command forward headquarters in Qatar, from where theoperation was being run, there were no significant doubts about who wasinside those vehicles,” it continued.
“Those watching could see the missiles strike, a manmade bolt from the sky.The vehicles were engulfed in a fireball. In total, four missiles werefired,” the report said.
Officials told NBC News that the drones, which followed the convoy, are notsilent, but their sound is not easily discernible in an urban environmentlike Baghdad.
The officials said that they had been closely tracking the Iraniancommander’s movements across the region for days.
On January 9, two Iraqi security officials told Reuters that they areinvestigating the role of suspected US informants at the Baghdad airport.
Syrian intelligence, it added, is investigating two employees of Cham WingsAirlines, a private commercial airline headquartered in Damascus.
