Israel-Iran Covert Spy Games Become More Dangerous
Bruce Riedel analyzes the state of the covert war between Israel and Iran. Escalating aggression from Hezbollah and countermeasures by Mossad suggest that this “spy versus spy” game is getting harder to contain. Riedel favors ousting the Alawite regime in Damascus and mobilizing the Syrian opposition around Turkish leadership.
The attack Monday in New Delhi on an Israeli diplomat’s car — in which the wife of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) representative in India was wounded — apparently represents the latest escalation in the covert war between Israel and Iran.
Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah have been engaged in a hot spy-versus-spy war for years. Now it is getting hotter and threatens to produce a larger conflict.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost little time in blaming the New Delhi attack — as well as a foiled attempt to bomb an Israeli embassy car in Tbilisi, Georgia — on Iran and Hezbollah. The prime minister also linked the Shia duo to failed terror plots in Azerbaijan and Thailand targeting Israelis in the last few months.
The latest attacks came four years after the head of Hezbollah’s terror wing, Imad Mughniyah, was killed in a car bomb in Damascus. Mughniyah had been attacking IDF and other Israeli targets since 1982. He was also linked to the attack on US Marines and French paratroopers in Beirut in 1983 and the bombing of the Khobar Towers US Air Force barracks in 1996.
