In an appearance on this weekend’s “Fox News Sunday,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said with certainty that Hezbollah and Iran were responsible for last week’s bombing of a tourist bus with Israelis onboard in Bulgaria.
He told host Chris Wallace that the bombing had many similarities to a thwarted attack in Cyprus.
“Yes we do know who it is,” Netanyahu said. “The whole world can see who it is. We do know that it is Hezbollah. We would have known that — you would have known or been able to surmise it. But what you know from Cyprus a week ago — a Hezbollah operator was caught planning exactly the same attack, exactly the same attack. You know, going to an airport, collecting information for an impending attack on Israeli tourists who get off the plane and are about to board a bus. So, exactly the same modus operandi was exposed in Cyprus. Fortunately, there, the terrorist that was caught and admitted that he worked on behalf of Hezbollah, Iran’s long-terrorist arm, you know. [You] could have surmised intelligently from the proximity of these two events and the identical nature of the planned attack and the executed attack.”
But Netanyahu clarified that no guesswork was necessary to link Hezbollah to the attack in this case.
“Here I am not surmising,” he said. “I am giving you something that I know as the Prime Minister of Israel, because I know on absolutely rock-solid intelligence this is Hezbollah and this is something Iran knows about very, very well.”
Wallace asked if Israel could positively identify the suspect in the bombing, who was suspected to have used a fake identification card.
“That’s being pieced together right now, but we know with absolute certainty — absolute certainty, without a shred of doubt, that this was a Hezbollah operation,” Netanyahu replied.
The Israeli prime minister added that friendly intelligence organizations throughout the world have supported that conclusion.