Nearly two decades after one of Israel's most daring covert operations, the country has officially confirmed for the first time that it was behind the assassination of Syrian General Mohammed Suleiman, a senior aide to President Bashar al-Assad who was killed in the summer of 2008.
Suleiman held extraordinary power within the Syrian regime. As Assad's closest confidant, he oversaw the country's most sensitive military procurement and development projects. Most significantly, he served as the chief architect behind Syria's clandestine nuclear reactor at Deir ez-Zor, a facility built in secret collaboration with North Korea and destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007.
Beyond his nuclear portfolio, Suleiman functioned as the primary liaison for transferring advanced weaponry, missiles, and strategic arms from Iran through Damascus to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Commanding Syria's covert weapons development branch and controlling the presidential palace's massive defense budgets, he was considered the single most important figure in Syria's military expansion and that of its regional proxies, making him a top-priority intelligence target.
The operation unfolded on August 1, 2008, with details now revealed in former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's memoir, as reported by Ynet. That evening, Suleiman was at his private beach villa in the coastal city of Tartus, dining on his terrace overlooking the Mediterranean. As he sat eating with guests, a specialized naval commando unit emerged from the water. The fighters, elite snipers from Shayetet 13, Israel's premier naval commando force, advanced under cover of darkness to within approximately 150 meters of the terrace, positioning themselves on both flanks. Despite the presence of numerous beachgoers nearby, the commandos remained completely undetected.
Once the target was positively identified and the order given, the snipers fired with precision from close range. Three bullets struck Suleiman in the head, neck, and back of the skull. His head fell backward, a sign of instant death. The strike left those present and the presidential palace in Damascus in complete shock. Immediately after neutralizing the target, the Shayetet fighters withdrew swiftly and silently back to the water, where a naval vessel collected them and disappeared into the sea without leaving a trace.
Following the operation, Assad chose to maintain public silence rather than openly accuse Israel. The only public acknowledgment came months later from Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, who claimed Israel was responsible due to Suleiman's role in the 2006 Lebanon War. The first confirmation of Israeli involvement emerged in 2015, when classified NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden identified Shayetet 13 as the executing unit. Now, 18 years later, through disclosures by Olmert and security officials, Israel has put an end to years of speculation surrounding the death of the man who ran the Alawite regime's most classified projects.
