Is This the Quiet Before the Storm?

Ma’ariv, Israel, June 5

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, thirsty for revenge in Israel, were able to mark a small victory his week: they managed to get thousands of Israelis planning to spend their holidays in the attractive resorts of Turkey to cancel their bookings. The travel warning to Turkey, issued this week by the National Security Council’s counter-terrorism division, came after extensive intelligence accumulated in the defense establishment about significant and tangible intentions of the Quds Force to carry out attacks against Israeli tourists. This is in retaliation for the assassination of Hassan Sayad Khodayari, deputy commander of Unit 840, which was in charge of carrying out attacks against Israel. It’s no secret that Iran has been working for some time to carry out revenge attacks on Israel and its citizens in response to a long list of attacks and assassinations carried out in Iran. We have probably not heard of many of the Iranian attempts that were cut short and did not materialize. However, this does not diminish Iran’s capabilities. Suffice to say that on March 17, 1992, Israel eliminated Abbas Mousavi, the Shiite Hizbullah leader in Lebanon. A month later, Iran carried out one of the largest terrorist acts against Israel, when a Shiite suicide bomber exploded a car bomb at the entrance gate to the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. Twenty-nine people were killed and more than 220 were injured in the attack. Two years later, the Iranians carried out a similar attack at the headquarters of the Jewish community center in Argentina, in which 86 people were killed and dozens more were injured. We heard the fervor of Iranian revenge last week from the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hossein Salami, who vowed to avenge Khodayari’s death. Therefore, Israel needs to direct its sensors and eyes to unexpected places and destinations. This is so as not to repeat the mistakes that unfolded in Argentina in the 1990s. For some time now, the Iranians have been working to recruit Arab-Israeli spies to carry out espionage and revenge operations within Israel. So far, these efforts have not succeeded. It is not inconceivable that, given the current atmosphere, Tehran may succeed in recruiting young Israeli Arabs for such a mission. The Iranians also have excellent capabilities in operating long-range lethal UAVs, which are capable of hitting strategic targets, and they have demonstrated this firmly in Yemen and Saudi Arabia. One of the best proxies for Iran is Hizbullah, which is equipped with thousands of missiles aimed at strategic targets in Israel. All of this goes without even mentioning the most important issue in the overt and covert struggle between Israel and Iran: the nuclear program, which is creating an unknown future for the Middle East. – Ephraim Ganor (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)