Iran’s missile raids on Erbil, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan in which, according to Tehran, there is an Israeli intelligence structure, would be a response to the airstrikes carried out in mid-February from Jerusalem to destroy hundreds of Islamic Republic drones in Kermanshah. And what the Israeli newspaper Haaretz claims.
Iranian state television broadcast a report detailing how the Pasdaran allegedly foiled an imminent Israeli attack to “sabotage” the uranium enrichment plant in Fordow. An agent paid by Israel in cash and cryptocurrencies allegedly attempted to approach an employee of the facility through a Hong Kong company to carry out an attack before Nowruz, the end of the Iranian year, on March 20. The Pasdaran intelligence and a previously unknown unit, renamed Nuclear Commando, also belonging to the Pasdaran, would have foiled the attack.
It is worth pointing out that Iranian state media often distribute propaganda packs. They do so because the establishment of the Islamic Republic uses, as a logical, the information environment to control the masses and spread the narrative. Everything reported so far could therefore be only partially true, but it is still very interesting to draw the lines that connect certain dots. Above all for the contemporaneity of what is emerging and for the temporal context that fits into what could be the final phase of the negotiations for the recomposition of the JCPOA, the agreement to freeze the Iranian nuclear program.
Israel was hit on Monday by what local media called a cyber attack of “unusual size, possibly one of the most serious Israel has suffered so far”. It is currently unclear who could be responsible for the crash that lasted 75 minutes. It seems to have been a DDoS action, one of those that flood sites with huge amounts of requests until they are blocked. Gil Messing, a spokesman for Israeli cybersecurity firm Check Point Software Technologies, told Bloomberg that the attack is unlikely to have done significant damage. “This is usually done to send a message and create a lot of confusion. It is not necessarily infiltration or information acquisition, ”she added. The clues seem to lead to two possibilities: Iran and Russia. The first is the most popular: although the attack techniques are reminiscent of those typical of Russian hackers, it is not clear why Moscow might want to attack Jerusalem now, which is diplomatically spending itself on the situation in Ukraine.
Three episodes, a common denominator: the tensions between the two countries that have rekindled in the face of the prospect of a return of the United States to the nuclear agreement. Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to the United States to avoid such a step. Bibi asked all US citizens to ask their government to stop nuclear talks because “giving the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal” and lifting sanctions would allow them access to billions of dollars they would use to continue to sow “terror. “.
And the Netanyahu line, nothing new. A position that also has internal reasons, criticism of the local government and relations with the Biden presidency – while personally Joe Bidendoes not seem to get along with the Israeli at all. However, the former prime minister expresses a widespread position in the Jewish state. There is substantial mistrust of Iran. It is feared that the international economic requalification of Iran, following the American re-entry into the agreement, will produce an indirect effect: the more money circulates, the more the Pasdaran can invest to continue to fund their interests. Which are also connected to the maintenance of a network of regional militias that goes from Lebanon to Iraq, from Syria to Afghanistan, which sees Israel as an enemy.
A similar consideration is made by the Gulf countries, united with the Israelis by the confrontation with Iran. But there is also concern in Tehran: there are those who, like some of the Pasdaran, are afraid that the JCPOA will eliminate part of the privileges acquired over the years by transforming – through economic openings – the Islamic Republic into a more orderly country, where the theocratic military caste counts a little less. This is the reason for certain attacks aimed at destroying the system of dialogue with the West.
