After 18 Years, Israel Admits Assassinating Syria’s Top Nuclear General

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Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has confirmed in a new book that Israeli commandos assassinated a senior Syrian general in 2008, ending nearly two decades of official silence about an operation long attributed to Israel but never publicly acknowledged.

Gen. Muhammad Suleiman, a top adviser to former Syrian President Bashar Assad, was shot and killed on August 1, 2008, as he ate dinner at his seaside vacation home near the Syrian coastal city of Tartus, according to an excerpt from Olmert’s book shared on September 2 by the Ynet news site.

Suleiman was struck in the head and neck and died shortly afterward. Israel was widely suspected of carrying out the killing but had never taken responsibility.

“He [Suleiman] and his guests were sitting on the balcony, and the soldiers approached under the cover of darkness to a distance of 150 meters on either side of the balcony, and confirmed his identity,” he wrote. “Even though there were quite a few people on the beach, nobody noticed them.

“When the order was given, three bullets were fired at Suleiman, hitting the back of his head,” Olmert recounted. “Immediately afterward, the soldiers retreated to the coast, on the way to the boat that picked them up.”

Olmert wrote that Suleiman was a driving force behind Syria’s al-Kibar nuclear reactor at Deir Ezzor, which Israel destroyed in a September 2007 strike known in Israel as Operation Outside the Box. Israel did not publicly acknowledge responsibility for that strike until 2018.

Olmert described Suleiman as Assad’s “closest confidant and close friend,” a former Syrian military officer who, like Assad, belonged to the country’s Alawite minority.

Suleiman kept an office in the presidential palace near Assad’s, Olmert wrote, adding: “Unlike the others, he knew everything.”

Olmert wrote that even Syria’s defense minister and military chief were unaware the reactor existed, while Suleiman oversaw the project, including a sensitive deal with North Korea and an elaborate effort to conceal the reactor for years.

“Suleiman was responsible for the entire logistical operation surrounding the reactor’s construction,” Olmert wrote. “He controlled the entry of materials and personally made sure their purpose and nature were not exposed. He had a hand in everything.”

Olmert wrote that a month before the Israeli strike on the reactor, Assad gave Suleiman a new Mercedes in recognition of his contribution to the project.

Assad’s government largely stayed silent publicly after the killing. Hassan Nasrallah, then the leader of Lebanese Hezbollah, was among the few senior regional figures to address it openly, saying months later that Israel was responsible and linking the killing to Suleiman’s role in the 2006 Second Lebanon War between Israel and Hezbollah.

Israeli reports had identified him as a liaison between Assad and Hezbollah, specifically responsible for supplying arms to the group.

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Evidence pointing to Israeli responsibility emerged publicly years before Olmert’s book. In 2015, The Intercept published what it said were authentic United States intelligence documents indicating the operation had been carried out by Shayetet 13, the Israeli Navy’s elite naval commando unit.

The documents, leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, were described at the time as the first official confirmation that Suleiman’s killing had been an Israeli operation, undercutting speculation that he had been assassinated amid an internal Syrian power struggle.

In 2010, The Guardian reported that Syrian authorities suspected Israel of carrying out the assassination, though Damascus had not publicly accused Israel. That report was based on a U.S. diplomatic cable later published by WikiLeaks. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus sent the cable to the State Department two days after Suleiman was killed.

“Syrian security services quickly cordoned and searched the entire beach neighborhood where the shooting had occurred,” the cable said.

The cable said Israel emerged as an immediate and obvious suspect, noting that Syrian security officials were well aware the Mediterranean port city of Tartus would give Israeli operatives easier access than inland locations such as the capital Damascus. It also noted that Suleiman was not a widely recognizable public figure, and that the apparent use of a sniper suggested whoever carried out the killing had enough intelligence to identify him from a distance.

A classified U.S. document written several months earlier described Suleiman as a “special adviser to the Syrian president for strategic weapons and arms procurement.”

The Israeli admission came just a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency announced that it had closed the book on its long-running investigation into Syria’s covert nuclear activities under Assad.

In a classified report, excerpts of which were published by both The Associated Press and Reuters, the UN nuclear watchdog revealed that 73 metric tons of natural, unenriched uranium metal, including 55 metric tons in the form of clad fuel rods, were found in a facility linked to al-Kibar.

The admission was likely made not so much to provide closure as to warn the new Islamist-led government in Damascus, which, despite cooperating with the IAEA, has refused to give up on the discovered nuclear material.

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