Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert confirmed on Saturday for the first time that Israel was involved in the 2008 assassination in Damascus, Syria of top Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mughniyeh.
During a Channel 13 news panel discussion of the Sept. 27 assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Olmert said, “We haven’t spoken about it until today, but it seems to me that today we can already admit this fact, after we eliminated the entire leadership of Hezbollah, we can admit that 16 years ago we eliminated their biggest, most abominable, most despicable mass murderer ever, who built the entire army of Hezbollah.”
“There were all kinds of dramatic aspects” to the Mughniyeh operation “which I cannot disclose,” he said. However, he went on to say that “what exploded was the bumper of the vehicle that we made sure to put there, so that at the point where Imad Mughniyeh passed, there was someone who could push the button exactly to get him. What happened there, how it developed, what could have happened—I think I’ve talked too much about all of this.”
A consistent and outspoken critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Olmert nonetheless welcomed the strike on Nasrallah, which Netanyahu approved. “This is an important move, we’re talking about a person who was responsible for 20 years or more of endless wars, of endless injuries, of killing many Israelis,” he said.
Olmert has called on world leaders to boycott Netanyahu and encouraged “war waged in a face-to-face battle, head-to-head and hand-to-hand” during anti-government protests against Netanyahu’s judicial reform. Olmert had tried to promote a judicial reform as prime minister but failed.
Following the government’s failed handling of the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Olmert faced widespread protests and calls to resign. He finally resigned in 2008 amid a corruption investigation against him. He was convicted in 2014 and sentenced to prison in 2015. He was released in 2017 after serving 16 months behind bars.
In 2006, he was accused of damaging Israel’s policy of nuclear ambiguity when he said that Iran was “aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel and Russia [have].” He later denied that this was an admission that Israel has nuclear weapons.