The assassinated Syrian general was in charge of securing the al Kibar reactor

Debka ^ | August 3rd, 2008

[Perdogg]

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, whom a sniper shot dead in the Syrian port town of Tartus early Saturday, Aug. 2, was a shadowy figure who acted for Bashar Assad in the regime’s four most sensitive and confidential spheres:

1. He was the president’s liaison man with the North Korean government. On his frequent trips to Pyongyang, Gen. Suleiman organized the consignment of components for the plutonium reactor in northern Syria, which Israeli demolished last September, and the security of the North Korean scientists and technicians who accompanied them.

2. Muhammad Suleiman was also the president’s private channel of communication with Iranian military and intelligence chiefs; in this capacity, he most probably facilitated the Syrian-Iranian-North Korean connection. The Syrian reactor was designed to produce nuclear fuel for the Iranian program and radioactive weapons for Syria.

3. The late general also acted as the president’s contact man with Hizballah’s leaders. He worked directly with Imad Mughniyeh, head of Hizballah’s security apparatus, who was killed in Damascus last February.

4. His key function was the management of Assad’s personal interaction with the Syrian chief of staff, generals and heads of military intelligence. There was no state secret from the powerful general. He was to have accompanied the Syrian president on his state visit to Tehran Saturday; instead he was laid to rest in his home village of Driekesh in the north.

Damascus has done its utmost to keep the general’s death under wraps, but word has spread and theories abound: Speculation ranges from an outside hand, or a jealous rival to an internal element who felt the concentration of so much power in one hand was a threat to the regime.

[oldfart]

So if the Mossad were to use a sniper suspicion would go to the U.S.

I know; pretty convoluted thinking but in a business where the right hand doesn’t know what the left one is doing...

[Perdogg]

The John Bachelor Radio show speculated that Hezbollah was responsible for the hit.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

I don’t think that Hezbollah has the necessary discipline to use a sniper. All of their hits are usually pretty messy, with lots of collateral damage. This was precision one-shot, one-kill, worthy of Carlos Hathcock himself.

[Perdogg]

I disagree. Many members of Hezbollah have been trained by IRGC. They were used in a Buenos Aries bombing of a synagogue.

According to Israeli newspapers, two IDF communications technicians, Itai Iluz and Avishai Korisky, were fired on by a Hezbollah sharpshooter the morning of July 20 while they were repairing an antenna on the roof of an outpost in Western Galilee.