Secret ‘cold war’ between Israel and Iran starts to emerge from the shadows

Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement in the death of Fakhrizadeh, who became the fifth Iranian nuclear scientist assassinated since 2007.

However, the American newspaper New York Times published a detailed report describing how the attack was carried out by Israel.

The former Mossad chief later revealed that the scientist had been a target “for many years”, and that the Israeli intelligence agency was concerned about his knowledge.

Western intelligence agencies believed that Fakhrizadeh was the head of a secret program to build a nuclear warhead.

In the months that followed, when Joe Biden became US president and tried to revive the Iran nuclear deal (which was abandoned by his predecessor Donald Trump), Iran and Israel apparently continued their covert operations.

Israel announced that it had foiled an alleged Iranian assassination plot; Iran bragged about a drone operation inside Israel, and both countries allegedly attacked each other’s cargo ships.

Iran said last week that Israel was behind a sabotage attack on an underground nuclear facility. And just a few days ago, it said it would prosecute three people on suspicion of ties to the Mossad, accused of planning the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

Iran has also denounced a number of mysterious deaths within the country, including two aerospace officers who were “martyred during a mission”, as well as a Defense Ministry engineer who was “martyred to industrial sabotage”.

But it did not go so far as to blame Israel for the deaths.

The war between Israel and Iran now appears to be coming out of the shadows.

It even gained Hollywood contours in the series Tehran, of Apple TV, in which a Mossad agent infiltrates the highest echelons of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s security apparatus.

In real life, Richard Goldberg, who served as director of the White House National Security Council to combat Iranian weapons of mass destruction under President Donald Trump (2017-2021), said Mohsen Fakhrizadeh could not have been assassinated. without there being a huge security breach inside Iran.

“It can be assumed that in order to enter a highly protected nuclear facility or gain access to key officials, you would have to have accomplices within the regime,” he declared.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.

But since Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal in 2018 and reinstated US sanctions, Iran has responded by enriching uranium to ever-higher levels of purity — and is now close to having enough for a nuclear weapon.

His talks with world powers in Vienna about resuming the nuclear deal also stalled.

Iran is also suspected of attacking American and Israeli interests in the region in retaliation for attacks on its territory.

In March, it fired ballistic missiles at what was supposed to be an Israeli “strategic center” in the Iraqi Kurdistan region.

Iran-backed militias were also accused of launching rockets and drones at Iraqi bases housing US troops, as well as carrying out bomb attacks on supply convoys.

In an unprecedented move, Israel recently warned its citizens in Istanbul to leave the city and others not to travel to Turkey, saying they faced “real and immediate danger” from Iranian agents seeking to harm Israelis.

Meanwhile, Israel’s now-former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said his country was implementing what he called the “octopus doctrine”, which involves stepping up covert operations related to nuclear, missile and drone programs in Iranian territory, in instead of targeting regional (third-party) proxies in other countries.

“We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we create a new equation to get to the head,” Bennett told British magazine The Economist in early June.

Mohammad Marandi, a professor at the University of Tehran and a media consultant for Iran’s nuclear negotiating team at the Vienna talks, responded:

“Killing innocent civilians under Western political protection is nothing new for the Israeli regime, but the Israelis exaggerate their capabilities for political purposes, pretending that common accidents and deaths are also their doing.”

“Iran will definitely fight back, but Iran is patient,” he added.

The head of Iran’s elite Quds force, the Revolutionary Guard’s overseas operations arm, General Esmail Qaani, stated that Iran will continue to support any anti-US or anti-Israel movement anywhere.

Relations between the US and Iran have also deteriorated since Washington killed Qaani’s predecessor, Qasem Soleimani, in a drone strike on the Iraqi capital in January 2020.

Soleimani had been in the crosshairs of the US military several times but was spared until Donald Trump decided to pull the trigger, under the influence of his then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Trump said Soleimani was “the number one terrorist anywhere in the world”.

The Trump administration has also tried to shift the balance of power in the Middle East and further isolate Iran by negotiating the Abraham Accords, in which the UAE and Bahrain agreed to normalize relations with Israel.

“Iran hates the Abraham Accords,” said a senior Arab diplomat who declined to be named.

However, a former Iranian official claimed they did not see the agreements as lasting, describing them as more of a “temporary love affair”.

Ahead of President Biden’s upcoming visit to Israel and Saudi Arabia, a senior White House official said the United States did not see the shadow war between Iran and Israel escalating — at least not in a worrying way.

However, Richard Goldberg, who now works for the Washington-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, says Israel’s underground campaign may have its limits.

“The world is waiting for a big moment, when we wake up and hear about Israeli air strikes.”

“But the Israelis seem to be quietly normalizing the war in the shadows, which can easily turn into a direct attack on nuclear facilities, without the world saying, ‘There is a military attack, we have to stop it.’

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