(JTA) — Israeli intelligence helped the United States in its mission to assassinate top Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
“Intelligence from Israel helped confirm the details,” NBC News reported on Friday.
In “Airport informants, overhead drones: How the U.S. killed Soleimani,” NBC News traces the operation to kill Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Quds Force, which operates a number of regional militias and is allied with terrorist groups targeting Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
The Israeli intelligence helped the U.S. confirm a tip from informants at the airport in the Syrian capital of Damascus, which told the CIA exactly when a jet carrying Soleimani took off for Baghdad, according to the report.
U.S. drone airstrikes early on Jan. 2 hit a vehicle in which Soleimani was riding near Baghdad International Airport, killing him.
Iran retaliated with missile strikes on two U.S. bases on Monday, with no reported American casualties.
According to NBC, the targeted killing is “the latest demonstration of how, two decades after the CIA spotted but was unable to kill a man they believed was al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, the U.S. has become adept at hunting and killing its enemies, particularly in the troubled regions of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa
