Published: 29 June 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
DROR DORON examines the implications of Iranian attempts to attack Israeli and Jewish targets in the Diaspora.
Israel and Cyprus announced this week that they had foiled an Iranian terror attack on Israeli and Jewish targets in the Mediterranean island.
Seven Pakistan nationals, believed to be recruited by Tehran, were arrested and an international arrest warrant issued for the cell’s leader. The operation disrupted a plot to assassinate a visiting Israeli property businessman, attack the local Chabad house, and target hotels and entertainment venues frequented by Israeli tourists.
The Iranian embassy denied responsibility but the plot is believed to be linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian army that is considered a terror organisation by several countries.
The wider context of this week’s events is the shadow war that has raged between Israel and Iran for the past 15 years. The conflict centres on Iran’s attempts to advance its nuclear capabilities, Israel’s actions to disturb and delay those plans, and Teheran’s countermoves on Israelis outside Israel.
As both countries refrain from direct military confrontation, which would carry disastrous consequences for the two sides and could escalate to a regional war, Jerusalem and Tehran are engaged in a covert fight that allows each side the safety of deniability.
A significant difference, though, lies in the targets and modus operandi of the two countries.
Israel is blamed by the Iranian regime for pin-point attacks on Iranian soil against infrastructure and scientists involved in Tehran’s nuclear project. The most prominent examples are the assassination in November 2020 of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was regarded as the chief of Iran's nuclear program, and the mysterious massive explosion in the Nataz nuclear facility in April 2021.
Iran is implicated in a string of failed retaliation attempts targeting Israelis abroad and Jewish buildings in the Diaspora. The Cyprus plot can be added to similar attempts to target a synagogue in Athens last March; a Turkish arrest of a group targeting Israeli tourists in Istanbul in June 2022; and the arrest of an operative trying to target an Israeli businessman in Cyprus in October 2021.
