Hawzah News Agency –A former leading Israeli military official admitted for the first time that Israel played a role in the 2020 assassination of Iran’s Major General Qassem Suleimani in Iraq.

Former chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate Maj. Gen. Tamir was the first Israeli official to acknowledge Tel Aviv regime’s involvement in the strike which killed the commander of the elite Quds Force.

“Assassinating Suleimani was an achievement, since our main enemy, in my eyes, are the Iranians,” Hayman said in the Kislev issue of Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center’s quarterly journal Mabat MLM, published in November.

Hayman noted there had been “two significant and important assassinations during my term,” which ended in October.

“The first, as I’ve already recalled, is that of Qassem Suleimani – it’s rare to locate someone so senior, who is the architect of the fighting force, the strategist and the operator – it’s rare,” he said.

He called the Iranian commander “the engine of the train of Iranian entrenchment” in Syria.

Suleimani was assassinated along with Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, former deputy commander of Iraq’s Hashd Shaabi paramilitary force near Baghdad Airport.

Just days after the strike on January 3, 2020, NBC reported that Israeli intelligence had participated in the operation.

Last week, Donald Trump, who was US president at the time of the airstrike, griped in an Axios interview that he had felt pressured by Tel Aviv to take the initiative on the operation.