Attacks on Iran: more to come Gendelman and Levin on Caliber.Az

Today, most of the countries neighboring Iran are interested in its military weakening. In this sense, the visit of Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen to Kyiv for the first time since the start of the war with Russia is of great interest. He met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and expressed solidarity with Ukraine.

At the meeting with Cohen, Zelenskyy said: "Iran is the common enemy of Israel and Ukraine." In response, Minister Cohen stated that Iran's activities in Ukraine deserved the harshest condemnation and that practical steps had to be taken by the international community. In the end, they agreed to cooperate against Iran in the international arena.

This is certainly an interesting point if we recall the nighttime air attack on Iran's military facilities a few weeks ago, including those where combat drones are produced, which are transferred to Russia and then used against Ukraine. And many sources at the time explicitly claimed that Israel was behind it.

I wonder if similar actions to weaken Iran's combat power are possible in the future. We see that Iran is silent so far, it is not ranting at those who dared to attack its military factories. It is in the interest of many countries that such a dangerous and unpredictable neighbour like Iran has as few opportunities for military aggression as possible.

Prominent Israeli experts shared their views on the matter with Caliber.Az.

Israel and Iran have been engaged in a secret and not-so-secret war between them for years, Israeli military expert David Gendelman said.

"This war, among other things, includes strikes and sabotage against Iranian military facilities in Syria and Iran itself. Incidents like the Isfahan have already happened and will still happen in this war. Israel selects targets and strikes in its own interests, the coincidence with Ukraine's interests is simply a 'combination of pleasant and useful'. Just as Ukraine is not aiming to help Israel in its war, neither is Israel aiming to help Ukraine in its war. But any strike on Iran's military capabilities indirectly helps both Ukraine and other countries interested in weakening Iran's military capabilities," Gendelman said.

For his part, IDF officer and war correspondent Yigal Levin said that Israel had not claimed responsibility for the recent attacks in Iran, but that it was simply the custom that any explosion in the Middle East was always immediately attributed to Israel.

"Yes, Israel does a lot of things in the Middle East, but we are not going to attribute 100% of all bombings and similar events to it. Could similar events happen again in Iran? I would suggest looking a little more broadly at what is happening. You could look, for example, at the border between Iraq and Syria. Convoys of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are constantly bringing something from Iraq to Syria, specifically to Damascus airport. And from there they fly something to Russia. The Iranians claim that they carry fruit and vegetables by this route. Well, of course, they have to involve Quds Forces (IRGC special military unit), there are no other people to do this.

But some unknown planes periodically strike and burn these convoys of trucks. Just on February 15, there was such a strike on the border of Iraq and Syria, and as a result, 6 trucks of Quds Forces were destroyed. Trucks that were carrying something. Well, the Iranians think it was fruit and vegetables, but we suspect there was something else there after all. And the number of such events is sure to increase, and so will their scale. There will be more strikes. Some such events will take place in Iran as well, I do not rule it out.

The situation in Iran itself is tense and difficult. People are rebelling, the authorities are jailing, hanging, and killing revolutionaries (meaning the Iranian opposition). The repression continues, and I cannot rule out that one event or another may repeat itself there. Why not? In any case, as long as the Ayatollah regime exists, and is terrorizing not only the Middle East but also Ukraine, for example, it will not be calm in Iran itself. As with its forces outside Iran - the IRGC, and Quds. Some unknown planes will bomb them and some of their convoys with 'fruits and vegetables' will burn," Levin concluded.