Iran and Israel appear to be locked in an assassination contest.
Israeli leaders blamed Iran for two assassination attempts on diplomats — Feb. 12 in Tbilisi, Georgia, and Feb. 13 in New Delhi. The bomb in Tbilisi was disabled before it could be activated, and the attack in India wounded the wife of an Israeli diplomat and her driver.
The attacks follow a number of reported attempts on Israeli and Jewish targets, most recently in Azerbaijan and Thailand. They also come after a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and military figures associated with Iran, most recently on Jan. 11. Iran has accused Israel of being behind those attacks. In keeping with policy on such issues, Israeli officials have declined to comment. But a number of unnamed American officials have told media outlets that they believe Israel is behind the killings.
Experts warn that the attacks could get worse.
“It’s clear we’re already in a situation of escalation, but what’s still not clear is how far that’s going to go,” said Michael Adler, Iran expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center.
If Iran manages to kill Israelis, it could invite an escalated response from Israel.
“We don’t need a war of words to descend into a war of assassinations to descend into something much bigger,” said Joel Rubin, director of government affairs at the Ploughshares Fund, which supports projects aimed at advancing peace.
After the bombing in India and the foiled attack in Georgia, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fingered Iran.
“Iran is behind these attacks; it is the largest exporter of terrorism in the world,” he said. “We will continue to take strong and systematic yet patient action against the international terrorism that originates in Iran.”
On Feb. 15, two Iranian men were arrested in Bangkok in connection with bombs that exploded in a house in the Thai capital, injuring one of them. A third suspect who crossed the border to Malaysia was arrested later that day in Kuala Lumpur.
Unnamed Israeli officials said the bombs were being prepared for a large-scale attack against an Israeli target. Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, Itzhak Shoham, told the Associated Press that the bombs found in the blown-up home were similar to those used in the attacks in India and Georgia.
“The attempted attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies are continuing to perpetrate terrorism,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a statement from Singapore. “The recent attacks are yet another example of this.”
Iran’s ambassador to New Delhi, Mehdi Nabizadeh, rejected Israeli accusations, calling them “untrue and sheer lies, like previous times,” Reuters reported.
But on Feb. 3, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said his country is prepared to assist those who would “confront” Israel and the United States.
“From now on, in any place, if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will endorse and we will help,” he said.
The events in Tblisi and New Delhi took place almost simultaneously the day after the fourth anniversary of the car bombing in Syria that killed Imad Mughniyeh, the operations chief for Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanon proxy.
At the time, Hezbollah leaders said they would avenge the killing at a time and place of their choosing. That was widely seen as a signal that Hezbollah was ending its unofficial moratorium, in place since the mid-1990s, on attacking Israelis and Jews outside the Middle East.
In 1994, an Iranian-sponsored bombing thought to have been carried out by Hezbollah operatives leveled the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. A bombing attack on that city’s Israeli Embassy two years earlier left 29 dead.
On Feb. 15, police arrested five suspects in the New Delhi bombing attack that wounded Tal Yehoshua Koren, the wife of a diplomat stationed there with the Israeli Defense Ministry mission. Local police also identified a red motorcycle they believe was used to stick the bomb on the car carrying her as she went to pick up her children from school.
Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Benny Gantz called a meeting to assess the safety of all of Israel’s foreign missions.
Paul Hirschson, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, commended the Indian and Georgian governments for working with Israel. But he also suggested that Israel’s responses to such attacks would not be confined to prevention.
“I don’t think we’re going to say we’re going to twiddle our thumbs happily at attempts on Israelis anywhere,” he said. n
JTA Israel correspondent Marcy Oster contributed to this report.