Israeli attacks feed distrust and fear in Iran

In a rare display of public solidarity, Iran’s intelligence minister and the Revolutionary Guard’s intelligence chief this month posed for a photograph, vowing to work together to boost security — widely understood to mean combat Israeli operations in the Islamic state.

The decision to curb their rivalry speaks to the anxiety at the highest levels of the Iranian establishment as well as the Iranian street about an uptick in attacks attributed to Israel, including the assassination in May of a commander on his doorstep in broad daylight in central Tehran.

Esmaeil Khatib, the intelligence minister, and Brigadier General Mohammad Kazemi, whose predecessor was replaced in the wake of the assassination, promised “co-operation of intelligence and security systems” amid concerns that a decades-long shadow war with Israel was about to burst into the open.

“It feels as if Israel has established a large-scale organisation in Tehran and freely runs its operations,” said a reformist politician. “Israel is clearly targeting Iran’s ‘highly secure’ image to tarnish its greatness in people’s eyes.”

Israel has been blamed by Iran for the assassination of at least five nuclear scientists in the last 12 years: the most recent, in 2020, was a sophisticated operation involving a remote-controlled machine gun. Iranian intelligence also believes that Israel has stolen confidential nuclear documents from its archives and staged attacks on nuclear sites. In 2018, Israel’s former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli intelligence had collected what he claimed was “half a ton” of Iranian nuclear documents, which he alleged showed that Tehran had lied about its nuclear ambitions.

A spokeswoman for Israel’s prime minister’s office declined a request from the Financial Times for comment. But in a rare interview, Israel’s national security adviser Eyal Hulata last week told the country’s Channel 13 News: “Israel will act as it sees fit. We’ve acted quite a lot in Iran over the past year.” He did not provide details of what those “acts” entailed.

Israeli officials have made clear their determination to tackle Iran, which has enriched its uranium close to weapons-grade level since former US president Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 and imposed swingeing sanctions on the republic. Talks about its revival continue though progress has been slow. Israel has long opposed the deal. “We are implementing the Octopus Doctrine,” former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said last month before leaving office. “We no longer play with the tentacles, with Iran’s proxies: we’ve created a new equation by going for the head.”

These latest attacks are a shock to a regime proud of its security. Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Iran’s joint chief of staff for the armed forces, said earlier this month that “it is not a small achievement that in [turbulent] west Asia, we are on a quiet, safe boat away from insecurities”.

The extent of Israeli infiltration into the Iranian establishment has also become clear, analysts say. “Infiltration is a very serious issue, which the system needs to think of a solution,” said one conservative analyst.

Alleged strikes include the killing of two Iranian soldiers deployed in Syria in March, which Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard blamed on Israel. A few days later, the guards retaliated, claiming responsibility for a missile attack on what the elite force said was an Israeli intelligence centre in northern Iraq.

Iran’s defence ministry had said that one of its “exemplary” engineers was “martyred” in an “incident” in a research centre at the Parchin military site in June. Another military official at the defence ministry was also “martyred” while “doing his mission” in Semnan province in Iran. An alleged cyber attack by Israel caused brief disruptions in production at some Iranian steel companies in June.

There have also been reports of Iranian cyber attacks in Israel. An Iran cyber attack was suspected to be behind false siren alerts in West Jerusalem and Eilat last month, according to Israeli media. Iranians hacked into a number of popular Israeli travel booking websites, managing to obtain the personal information of over 300,000 Israelis, Israeli reports suggest.

Iranian officials caution that they will not seek to escalate tensions. “Iran’s policy remains to work with its proxy forces and we will not initiate any attacks against Israel if Israel doesn’t attack Lebanon [Hizbollah is Iran’s main proxy force],” said a regime insider. “It’s not wise for us to fight with Israel. And Zionists also show teeth to attack but their teeth are not sharp enough to go as far as striking Iran.”

Mohammad-Ali Jafari, Iran’s former commander of the guards, last month referred to the enemy’s “psychological operations” that create the perception of Israeli involvement in attacks “that have not been carried out by them”. His implication is that the US may have been behind these attacks.

On top of developing missiles, drones and speedboats, Iran needs to prepare for this psychological and intelligence warfare, analysts say.

The guards’ top commander, Brigadier General Hossein Salami said last month at the ceremony to introduce the new intelligence chief that this “war of intelligence has today turned into the most consistent and the most real war”. He warned that “the enemy has brought all its means to the field” and reminded comrades that “many regimes” were overthrown by global powers through intelligence operations.

“The enemy [US/Israel] intends to take away our self-confidence and empty us from within,” he said. “This is the most dangerous and the most deceitful kind of aggression. We urge all . . . to help foil this illusion.”

The reports of regular attacks on their country have already made some Iranians feel less secure. “Who gives information to Israelis? Those inside the system must be doing it,” said Ali, a bazaar merchant. “We feel safe but then who knows; maybe the system is falling apart from inside similar to the USSR.”

Additional reporting by James Shotter in Jerusalem