The Iranian Revolutionary Guards, thirsty for revenge in Israel, were able to mark a small “V” this week: they managed to get thousands of Israelis who planned to spend their holidays these days in Turkey’s attractive resorts to cancel their bookings.
The travel warning to Turkey, issued this week by the National Security Council’s counter-terrorism division, came following extensive information recently accumulated in the defense establishment about significant and tangible intentions of Quds Force in the Revolutionary Guards to carry out attacks against Israeli tourists. This is in retaliation for the assassination of Siad Houdai, deputy commander of Unit 840, which aims to carry out attacks against Israel.
It is no secret that Iran has been working for some time to carry out revenge attacks on Israel and its citizens in response to a long list of attacks and assassinations carried out, it claims, by Israel on its soil. We have probably not heard of much of those Iranian attempts that were cut short and did not materialize. However, this does not diminish or belittle the capabilities of the Iranians.
Suffice it to mention that on March 17, 1992, Israel eliminated the Shiite Hezbollah leader in Lebanon, Abbas Mousavi. A month later, Iran carried out one of the largest terrorist acts against Israel, when a Shiite suicide bomber exploded in a car bomb at the entrance gate to the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina. 29 people were killed and more than 220 were injured in the attack. Two years later, the Iranians carried out a similar attack on the building of the Jewish community in Argentina, in which 86 people were killed and dozens more were injured.
We heard the fervor of Iranian revenge last week from the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Hussein Salami, who said at Houdai’s funeral: “The Zionist entity is behind the assassination – we swear to avenge his death.”
Alongside all this, it is important to emphasize that Iran, to the extent of the blows it has reportedly received from Israel in recent years, is well aware of Israel’s capabilities to act against it on its soil. She is therefore careful and refrains from overt or overt revenge actions that leave her fingerprints. Therefore, Israel needs to direct its sensors and eyes to unexpected places and destinations. This is so as not to repeat the mistakes, as happened in Argentina in the 1990s.
It is also very likely that Iran would prefer to use mercenaries for such retaliatory actions, as the Iranian criminal Mansour Rassouli, who was recently arrested and admitted in his interrogation, planned to harm an Israeli diplomat in Turkey, according to the order and direction of the Revolutionary Guards.
Revolutionary Guards in Iran (Photo: Reuters)For some time now, the Iranians have been working to recruit mercenaries from Israeli Arabs to carry out espionage and revenge operations in the country. So far it has not succeeded, but never resilience. It is not inconceivable that in the current atmosphere, as we saw in Operation Wall Guard in the Arab sector, Tehran may succeed in recruiting young Israeli Arabs for such a mission.
The Iranians also have excellent capabilities in operating long-range lethal UAVs, which are capable of hitting strategic targets, and they have demonstrated this firmly in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.
One of the best options for them is Hezbollah, which is equipped with thousands of missiles aimed at strategic targets in Israel. And all this without even mentioning here the most important issue in the overt and covert struggle between Israel and Iran – the nuclear program, which is creating an unknown reality in the Middle East with a lot of tensions.