This account puts forward two important claims.
Firstly, Sadr's elimination was directly linked to the inter-factional struggle among Iranian revolutionary cadres in the lead-up to the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran a few years later.
Secondly, that Sadr was aligned with the faction despised by Khomeini's lieutenants, including Former Iranian Brigadier General Ali Reza Asgari, who according author Kai Bird was "the man who built, promoted and founded Hezbollah, and who has been under protective custody in the United States since his defection in 2007."
Beheshti was also reportedly jealous that Musa Sadr and Ayatollah Khomeini were related by marriage. Ahmad Khomeini, Ruhollah Khomeini's son, was married to Musa al Sadr's niece, and another Khomeini son, Mustafa was a close friend to Imam Sadr. The published claim that Musa Sadr's second son who lives in the US and is married to the granddaughter of Ayatollah Khomeini is false according to Sadri Sadr, the Imam's son and Director of the Beirut based Sadr Foundation and chief investigator of his father and his compassion's disappearance.
Some have claimed that the PLO's Yasser Arafat, colluded with Gaddafi with whom he was close at the time to remove Sadr who was an increasingly harsh critic of the Palestinian military activities in southern Lebanon. PLO attacks on Israel automatically drew reprisals and the victims were mainly Shia villagers. Anti-PLO resentment from South Lebanon's Shia community endured and one recalls that at the beginning of their July 2006 invasion of Lebanon, Israeli troops were sometime showered with flowers of gratitude in southern villages. In Lebanon today there is still some Shia some anti-Palestinian hostility and some argue that this one of the main reasons why Hezbollah is accused of blocking in Parliament, the elementary civil right to work and to own a home for the quarter million Palestinians still living in Lebanon.
Despite Sadr and Arafat's mutual hostility, no dispositive probative evidence has surfaced that Arafat was directly involved in the killing of the Sadr delegation. Research over the past few years reveals that Musa Sadr's relations with the PLO and Libya were indeed at low ebb by 1978 especially after Israel's "Operation Litani" against the Palestinians had inflicted regular death and destruction on the Shia residents of southern Lebanon who were stuck in the middle. By then, Sadr's strong criticisms of the PLO had intensified, and the Libyan-funded press in Beirut attacked the Imam constantly. Consequently, some have suggested, there was a PLO motive to go along with the "disappearance" or at least not stop it.
Gadaffi was no exception to the criticism of Musa Sadr and for six years after Sadr's disappearance he spoke publicly against him. But starting in 1984, as his relations cooled somewhat with Khomeini, Libya's leader changed his rhetoric and began praising the Imam.
Author Kai Bird reports that "The Good Spy" Robert Ames was also told by Arafat's security chief Salemeh that Arafat called Gadaffi on August 31, 1978 to ask about Musa Sadr. The same day Gadaffi received a call from Beheshti instructing him to not let Sadr leave Libya as he was "a threat to Khomeini."
It is not known what Arafat told Gadaffi during their phone call, but some doubt the accuracy of what Salameh reportedly told the CIA's Robert Ames because they believe that Arafat's intelligence chief wanted to protect the PLO leader to whom Salameh was rumored to be his personally chosen successor.
[Franklin P. Lamb is deeply committed to rescuing and aiding refugee children in Syria. He is a volunteer with the Lebanon, France, and USA based "Meals for Syrian Refugee Children, Lebanon (MSRCL)", which seeks to provide hot nutritional meals to Syrian and other refugee children.]
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