Louai Beshara/AFP (via Getty Images)
ISTANBUL — Israel has been on high alert for possible attacks by Iran since an airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Syria two weeks ago killed several senior Iranian military officers. Iran blamed Israel for the attack and pledged revenge.
As tensions rise and concerns grow that an imminent Iranian attack could lead to war in Gaza, many countries have warned their citizens not to visit the region.
Iranian leaders have been among the sharpest critics of Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip. Tehran has made no secret of its praise for those attacking Israel, including the Hamas-led attack on October 7 that Israel claims killed 1,200 people.
Israel edited a video showing Hamas militants killing civilians, including babies, and burning their bodies. Human Rights Watch has seen some of the video of the attack and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate the attack as a war crime.
Hossein Beris/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty
However, Iran wasted no time in hailing Hamas' attack as a 'victory'. Hours after news of the October 7 attack broke, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Khanani told Iran's ISNA news agency that “what happened today is consistent with the continued victories of anti-Zionist resistance in various sectors, including in Syria.” said. Lebanon and the Occupied Territories.”
Iran blamed Israel for the April 1 airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus that killed seven members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, including two IRGC generals. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attack.
If Israel is responsible, it would be the latest in a long line of attacks on Iranian targets.
1979 was an important year
Although Iran has been ruled by the Pahlavi dynasty for more than half a century, Iran-Israel bilateral relations have never been hostile. Iran was one of the first Muslim countries to recognize the new state of Israel..
Palestinians saw this as tacit international acceptance of the 'Nakba', or catastrophe – the forcible expulsion and displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians when Israel was founded in 1948.
Israel quickly established relationships with non-Arab countries, including military and security cooperation with Iran.
But Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979 plunged relations between the two countries. Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was ousted and the new supreme leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, pursued a policy of confronting the “arrogant” world powers. During his regime, the United States was known in Iran as the ‘Great Satan’ and Israel as the ‘Little Satan’.
Nonetheless, limited cooperation between Israel and Iran continued into the 1980s. But a hostile rivalry later emerged as Iran built and funded proxy militias and other groups in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen. The shadow war between Iran and Israel has intensified over the years.
Iran's nuclear program is its main target
Iran's nuclear program, which it has always claimed to be peaceful, has been a major focus of Israel's attacks. Tehran believes Israel and the United States introduced the Stuxnet computer virus in the early 2000s to target uranium enrichment centrifuges for Iran's nuclear program.
A series of sabotage attacks continued into the 2020s as Israel sought to damage Iran's nuclear facilities. Nuclear scientists were also targeted. U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 was seen as a blow to Tehran and a victory for Israel.
Iran continues to insist that its program is 100% peaceful, but certain incidents, such as the unexplained discovery of uranium particles in a location that Iran did not disclose to the UN nuclear watchdog, have troubled critics who doubt its motives. .
With Iran firmly under the control of Islamist hardliners and Israel's leading conservatives, it seems unlikely that friendly Iran-Israel relations will be restored any time soon.
proxy war
Iran has long supported armed groups around the region that target Israeli and U.S. forces. The main group is Hezbollah in Lebanon, formed in the 1980s to fight the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah has been firing rockets into northern Israel since the Gaza war began last October.
Iran also supports Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that led the October 7 attack on southern Israel that sparked the current war. Gaza health authorities say more than 33,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children, have died in the past six months.
Iran has also supported Yemen's Houthi rebels, who have fired ballistic missiles and attacked ships at the Israeli resort town of Eilat on the Red Sea. Houthi rebels say the attacks support Hamas.
Iran supports the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Israel says Tehran is using Syrian territory to ship missiles and other weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel has carried out numerous airstrikes in Syria to stem the flow of weapons and says the Iranian general killed in the consulate attack was a key figure in the logistics chain.
But now U.S. and Israeli officials are warning that Iran risks launching a direct attack on Israel. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on April 1 that the attack on the consulate building in Damascus, which Iran blames on Israel, was tantamount to an attack on Iranian territory. He threatened that Israel “must and will be punished.”
Israel has said attacks on Iranian territory would lead to a direct response against Iran. This could trigger a large-scale regional war.
U.S. officials said they had sent a message to allies with close ties to Tehran to urge Iran to show restraint. U.S. officials noted that the U.S. delivered the same message directly to Iranian officials.