Israel has either been blamed or claimed responsibility for a variety of attacks against Iran, from hitjobs to sabotage and cyber attacks.
Iran’s standouts in Israel’s eyes are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Tehran’s nuclear program.
As Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Saturday that it said were aimed at Iran’s military infrastructure, AFP takes a look at other efforts over the past few years.
Revolutionary Guard
Israel has been accused of targeting top members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, mostly in efforts outside their country’s borders.
The latest victims include a general who sided with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, killed in an Israeli strike in the suburbs of Beirut on September 27.
Seven members of the Revolutionary Guard, including two top-ranking ones, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Iran’s consular annex building in Damascus on April 1, 2024, according to Tehran.
The recent murders are the latest in a long list.
In December 2023, a year after a colonel was killed, a Syrian commander died in an attack blamed on Israel, also in Syria.
In May 2022, Sayyid Khodai, a member of the Quds Force, the unit in charge of external operations for the Guards, was shot by two motorcyclists while driving home in Tehran. According to the New York Times, Israel told the United States that it was responsible for the hitjob.
General Hassan Moghaddam, responsible for the armaments programs, was killed in an explosion at a munitions depot close to Tehran in November 2011, which was blamed on the United States and Israel.
Iran’s nuclear program
Israel has also been accused of carrying out targeted killings against several high-ranking Iranian physicists, often associated with Tehran’s nuclear program.
These include nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was assassinated in November 2020 and was introduced as deputy defense minister after his death.
Scientists Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who worked at the Natanz nuclear site, and Majid Shahryari, founder of the Nuclear Society of Iran, as well as particle physics professor Masoud Ali Mohammadi were also killed in the past few years.
Israel has also been accused of sabotaging Iranian nuclear installations, primarily the Natanz complex south of Tehran.
According to Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, a small explosion occurred at the site on April 11, 2021.
The New York Times reported that Israel played a role in the “loud explosion”, which apparently destroyed the internal electrical system supplying the uranium enrichment centrifuges.
Another “accident” also occurred in Natanz in July 2020, which Iran’s nuclear agency described as “sabotage”.
In September 2010, a cyberattack using the Stuxnet virus destroyed enrichment centrifuges at Natanz.
Iran blamed Israel and the United States, while information security experts also pointed the finger at Washington.
Iran’s allies
Iran’s allies have also found that Tehran is not always a safe haven.
Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in an Israeli attack in the Iranian capital on July 31. He was in Tehran to attend the inauguration ceremony of Iran’s new President Massoud Pezeshkian.
Iranian petrol
In March 2021, the Wall Street Journal, citing US and Middle East officials, reported that Israel had targeted at least a dozen ships bound for Syria in 2019 and, in most cases, carrying Iranian petrol.
The report said Israel had deployed underwater mines in the attack.
As of 2021, Israel and Iran accused each other of naval sabotage.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
