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Soleimani Confirmed that Israel Didn't Kidnap Iranian Diplomats in Lebanon

(American Interest) Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Shimon Shapira - For decades Iran has claimed that Israel has been holding four of its diplomats in captivity. Before he died in January, Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani confirmed to an Iranian journalist that this is a lie. On July 5, 1982, Seyyed Mohsen Mousavi, Iran's official representative in Beirut; Col. Ahmad Motevasseliyan, the head of the Iranian expeditionary force in Lebanon; a journalist of the IRNA news agency and an Iranian embassy driver were traveling from the Revolutionary Guards headquarters in Zabadani, Syria, to Beirut when they were seized at a roadblock north of Beirut by the Lebanese Forces, a Christian militia of the Phalange Party, and disappeared. Mansour Koochak Mohseni, Motevasseliyan's deputy, testified that in response, 70 Lebanese Christians belonging to the Phalange were kidnapped and brought to Zabadani. In the following decades, Iranian officials have ignored all disclosures of the ultimate fate of the four, including testimony by Lebanese Forces members who were involved in their kidnapping and killing. Instead it has continued to assert that Israel is holding them in a secret prison. Hamid Daudabadi, an Iranian journalist close to the Revolutionary Guards who has been probing the kidnapping for more than 25 years, said Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani confirmed to him earlier this year that, just a few hours after the kidnapping, the four were no longer alive, and that the claim that the four are being held by Israel was baseless. The writer is a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.
2020-03-02 00:00:00
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