Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency is suspected of being behind the recent assassination of two senior Iranian advisers in Libya.
The Dubai-based, pan-Arab television news channel Al-Arabiya reported on Monday that the two Iranians, who were killed in south Libya several days ago, were part of a senior delegation dispatched by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that had recently arrived in Libya to procure uranium for enrichment purposes.
According to the report, the two Iranian advisers were shot at close range by unidentified gunmen who fled the scene. The Iranians had reportedly been under Mossad surveillance from the moment they arrived in Tunisia, which was their entry point into Libya.
The Mossad agents, reported Al-Arabiya, had shadowed the Iranian delegation members and documented their meetings in Tunisia with senior Libyan officials in an effort to barter Iranian military aid for uranium mined in Libya.
The report also said that Tehran was investing considerable resources via pro-Iranian Shi’ite militias it is operating inside Libya to attain access to Libyan uranium mines. Ever since former dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s overthrow and death in 2011, Libya has been mired in a state of governmental instability and general lawlessness.
Al-Arabiya also quoted senior Libyan officials, who said the assassinated Iranian advisers had been responsible for coordinating between representatives of Iran’s nuclear program, senior Libyan government officials and the pro-Iranian militias in Libya tasked with transferring the mined uranium from Libya to Iran.
On Jan. 31, the Mossad carried out an operation in Tehran, seizing thousands of documents from the Islamic republic’s nuclear archive that proved Iran had lied about the nature of its nuclear program.
On April 30, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly unveiled the documents, arguing that Iran’s efforts to hold on to its nuclear expertise demonstrated that Tehran never really abandoned its aspirations of becoming a nuclear power and that it brazenly lied to the International Atomic Energy Agency, even after it vowed to come clean.
