In 1992, Israel was pissed off by the attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had carried out against it the previous year, in addition to the constant fear that Saddam Hussein might again seek weapons of mass destruction (probably Saddam’s pro-Palestine stance didn’t help). In light of this, IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and then his successor Yitzhak Rabin to approve an operation to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
Various schemes were considered, including crashing an Israeli plane or satellite in Iraq and then blowing it up when Hussein came to inspect it, creating a European straw company to sell him a new modern television studio from which he could broadcast his speeches and blowing it up as he broadcast, and detonating a booby-trapped monument as he stood before it at a memorial ceremony, but all these plans were ultimately scrapped.
The one that ended up being planned to be carried out was Operation Bramble Bush, which arose when Saddam’s uncle, Khairallah Talfah, was discovered to be terminally ill; the Israelis decided to ambush the funeral party at the family’s plot at the cemetery in Tikrit, as it was the only place outside of well-guarded Baghdad where it would surely be Saddam himself and not a body double. The Israelis closely followed Talfah’s treatment in Jordan.
When it was decided that he was taking too long to die, a plan was conceived for the Mossad to assassinate Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother who was then the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, and ambush Saddam at his funeral instead. Under the plan, a commando team from the Israeli Army’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit was to be inserted into Iraq by helicopter some distance away, travel to the cemetery in jeeps disguised to look like Iraqi Army vehicles and fitted with missile launchers, and kill Saddam with TV-guided “Midras” missiles.
Sayeret Matkal commandos drilled for the operation with a replica of the Hussein family’s cemetery at the infantry training base near Kibbutz Tze’elim in the Negev. When the commandos were declared ready, a rehearsal for the operation led by Doron Kempel was held for senior IDF commanders on November 5, 1992. The operation’s execution was planned for just two days away.
The members of the hit team drilled with live missiles, while members of the unit’s intelligence and administrative staff played the part of Saddam and his entourage. The commandos fired live rounds at a convoy simulating the target after mistaking a “dry run”, where a soldier posed as Saddam waving at crowds, for a “wet run”, where Saddam’s part was replaced by a mannequin due to weariness from the training as well as poor planning to the point where the same code word was used for both a “dry” and “wet” run. As a result, the commandos fired two missiles at their fellow soldiers simulating Saddam and his convoy, one of which hit the middle of the convoy while the other landed a few yards away. Five soldiers were killed and six wounded. The plan was cancelled.
HollowSympathizer on
There’s a USS Liberty joke somewhere in there I just know it
kaneki_uzumaki20 on
so they thought that since it is taking too long for a guy to die so that we can ambush Saddam there?
like surely there are better ways to kill him
Capable-Sock-7410 on
Two years before there was an eerily similar incident that happened in that same base
In both cases 5 soldiers were killed by live ammunition while training in Tze’elim base
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In 1992, Israel was pissed off by the attack Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had carried out against it the previous year, in addition to the constant fear that Saddam Hussein might again seek weapons of mass destruction (probably Saddam’s pro-Palestine stance didn’t help). In light of this, IDF Chief of Staff Ehud Barak persuaded Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and then his successor Yitzhak Rabin to approve an operation to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
Various schemes were considered, including crashing an Israeli plane or satellite in Iraq and then blowing it up when Hussein came to inspect it, creating a European straw company to sell him a new modern television studio from which he could broadcast his speeches and blowing it up as he broadcast, and detonating a booby-trapped monument as he stood before it at a memorial ceremony, but all these plans were ultimately scrapped.
The one that ended up being planned to be carried out was Operation Bramble Bush, which arose when Saddam’s uncle, Khairallah Talfah, was discovered to be terminally ill; the Israelis decided to ambush the funeral party at the family’s plot at the cemetery in Tikrit, as it was the only place outside of well-guarded Baghdad where it would surely be Saddam himself and not a body double. The Israelis closely followed Talfah’s treatment in Jordan.
When it was decided that he was taking too long to die, a plan was conceived for the Mossad to assassinate Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam’s half-brother who was then the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations, and ambush Saddam at his funeral instead. Under the plan, a commando team from the Israeli Army’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit was to be inserted into Iraq by helicopter some distance away, travel to the cemetery in jeeps disguised to look like Iraqi Army vehicles and fitted with missile launchers, and kill Saddam with TV-guided “Midras” missiles.
Sayeret Matkal commandos drilled for the operation with a replica of the Hussein family’s cemetery at the infantry training base near Kibbutz Tze’elim in the Negev. When the commandos were declared ready, a rehearsal for the operation led by Doron Kempel was held for senior IDF commanders on November 5, 1992. The operation’s execution was planned for just two days away.
The members of the hit team drilled with live missiles, while members of the unit’s intelligence and administrative staff played the part of Saddam and his entourage. The commandos fired live rounds at a convoy simulating the target after mistaking a “dry run”, where a soldier posed as Saddam waving at crowds, for a “wet run”, where Saddam’s part was replaced by a mannequin due to weariness from the training as well as poor planning to the point where the same code word was used for both a “dry” and “wet” run. As a result, the commandos fired two missiles at their fellow soldiers simulating Saddam and his convoy, one of which hit the middle of the convoy while the other landed a few yards away. Five soldiers were killed and six wounded. The plan was cancelled.
There’s a USS Liberty joke somewhere in there I just know it
so they thought that since it is taking too long for a guy to die so that we can ambush Saddam there?
like surely there are better ways to kill him
Two years before there was an eerily similar incident that happened in that same base
In both cases 5 soldiers were killed by live ammunition while training in Tze’elim base
Then they got USA to do it anyway.