Is Iran Striking Back?
Last week, another bomb with alleged connections to Iran exploded in Thailand. The latest blast involved an Iranian man who after his explosives stash prematurely detonated, attempted to avoid arrest by throwing an explosive at Thai police, blowing off his own legs in the process. Whether this latest spate of violence is connected to the attempted bombings of Israeli foreign diplomats in India and Georgia is yet to be determined. But these recent events beg the question, is Iran striking back?
Israeli officials certainly think so. Yesterday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed members of his Likud party, “Today we witnessed two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians, Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world”. Netanyahu added that Israel has disrupted other attacks in Azerbaijan and Thailand in recent months but did not elaborate on a possible Iranian connection.
These attacks come during a time of heightened tensions between the two countries. Iranian officials are furious over the recent spate of assassinations and Israel’s use of MEK – a group both the United States and Iran regard as a terrorist organization – as hired guns.
If Iran is connected to these attacks, it would signify a new and dangerous era in Iranian-Israeli relations. This may indicate that the country is willing to go outside of their borders to attack foreign sites after years of playing defense and represents a situation that has moved past a war of words into a two-sided clandestine conflict.
It is also too early to discount Hezbollah involvement in these incidents as well. The powerful Shiite group has recently stated that it will take revenge for the 2008 Israeli assassination of Imad Mugniyah.
Although Hezbollah has not taken credit for the recent attacks, the group has shown its ability to undertake foreign military operations, most notably its bombings of Israeli targets in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. However, Hezbollah involvement would not change the Israeli perception of these attacks as being Iranian directed since any attack would require at least tacit Iranian approval.
What happens next is a mystery. But these attacks may signal the beginnings of a new undercover war between Israeli and Iran that is slowly coming into the public’s view. The longer these attacks continue, the more evidence there is that Iran or Hezbollah is reacting to Israeli-directed assassinations on their own terms and the more tensions increase in the region.
