Iran-funded book accuses Israel of Hariri assassination

"The Big Lie 2," an English-language book, says Israel used American missile to kill the Lebanese prime minister.

By JONNY PAUL
big lie 311 (photo credit: courtesy)
big lie 311
(photo credit: courtesy)
LONDON – Iran is accused of trying to propel Lebanon into a conflict with Israel by sponsoring a book which accuses the Jewish state of being behind 2005’s assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
According to a book, about to be published in English, it was Israel which carried out the assassination using a missile manufactured in the United States.
Thierry Meyssan, the French-born author, is alleged to have been paid one million dollars by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard to write the book.
The revelations come as heightened tensions in the region following a controversial two-day visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
A tribunal backed by the United Nations has been investigating the 2005 Beirut car bombing, which claimed the lives of Hariri and 21 others, and is expected to lay the blame for the killings at the door of Hizbullah.
According to a profile he has posted on the business website LinkedIn, Meyssan is now residing in Beirut, but the 53-year-old has spent half of the last year researching the book in Iran.
Titled L’effroyable Imposture II (The Big Lie 2), it is a followup to his 2002 book 9/11: The Big Lie, which claimed that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by a rogue element within the US military.
Meyssan sparked fury within the US Senate by insisting that the Pentagon was hit by a US missile, and not American Airlines Flight 77. In 2005, the US State Department took the unprecedented step of identifying him as someone who was actively promoting misinformation about America, saying he was persona non grata.
The book, which spawned a whole host of conspiracy theories, was translated into 26 languages, becoming a bestseller in the process.
Meyssan’s new book details what he claims is a cover up between Israel and America designed to hide the fact that they jointly carried out the assassination of Hariri.

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He had hoped to keep its publication secret until a launch in Beirut later this month but leaks have already been appearing on various websites in the US and Lebanon.
According to a blogger on the 9/11 conspiracy website TruthAction.org, Meyssan is using evidence provided to him by Hizbullah showing that an Israeli drone was tracking Hariri long before his assassination.
Hizbullah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah held a press conference in Beirut in August in which he claimed his scientists had hacked into the electronic data on the drone and been able to reproduce photographs it took of the former prime minister’s movements.
The French author’s reported association with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards is intriguing. Set up shortly after the 1979 Iranian revolution, several former members of the Guards now have posts in Ahmadinejad’s cabinet.
More pertinently, the Guards also control a third of Iran’s economy through a series of subsidiaries and trusts. This already substantial stake is reported to have increased recently with the purchase of a majority stake in the country’s main telecommunications company.
California-based Jim Hoffman, who created a number of 9/11 conspiracy websites, this week warned anyone reading Meyssan’s book to be extremely wary of his claims.
“When I first looked into it [September 11], I was swept up towards his way of thinking, the lack of debris around the Pentagon after the attack there and so forth,” Hoffman said. “But after reading his book, I looked into the actual evidence myself. I found a side story that is based on salacious assumptions and unscientific evidence.
“What he did was very damaging for legitimate attempts to investigate the crime scene, because it created this storm of nonsense basically.
“I will not be reading this latest book for the same reason,” Hoffman said.
Victoria Ashley, who runs another 9/11 conspiracy website, said, “Maybe it is all just talk, but the impression many of us had was that his role was to basically spread the ‘no plane at the Pentagon’ hoax around the world, quickly and in many languages, with resources no average political activist would ever have.”