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Turkey detains 34 people suspected of ties to Israel’s Mossad -senior official

Ece Toksabay and Tuvan Gumrukcu | Reuters — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:03:06 +0000

ANKARA, Jan 2 (Reuters) – Turkish authorities have detained 34 people suspected of being linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence service and of targeting Palestinians living in Turkey, a senior Turkish official said on Tuesday, adding Mossad also recruited members in the country.

Last month, Turkish officials warned Israel of “serious consequences” if it tried to hunt down members of the militant group Hamas living outside Palestinian territories, including in Turkey. President Tayyip Erdogan warned that would be a mistake.

Turkey, unlike most of its Western allies and some Arab nations, does not classify Hamas as a terrorist organisation.

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Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkey-detains-33-people-suspected-espionage-israels-mossad-state-media-2024-01-02/

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Israel-Iran Drone War Goes Ballistic: A Timeline

Sam Sokol — Sat, 23 Apr 2022 17:47:10 +0000

Israel and Iran’s drone war has seen a sharp escalation in recent months, with both sides increasingly using their unmanned air power to strike enemy forces.

As the military conflict between both countries becomes progressively brutal and more public, the tit-for-tat has involved strikes against infrastructure and personnel, as well as unprecedented aerial drone interceptions.

In recent years, Iran has made extensive use of armed drones in attacks throughout the Middle East. According to Israeli government sources, Iran is using drone attacks on Gulf targets staged by its proxies as a means of pressuring the United States and others into easing demands concerning its nuclear program.

Intelligence gathered in Israel shows that Iran acts to obscure its part in the attack by refraining from carrying out attacks itself, instead using proxy groups in the countries where it has set up drone bases, such as the Houthis in Yemen and Shi’ite militias in Iraq.

March 2021
Israeli jets intercept Iranian drones

The Israeli military announced that Israeli Air Force jets intercepted two Iranian drones en route to Israel in March 2021. The drones were monitored throughout their flight and intercepted by two F-35 aircraft before entering Israeli airspace “in coordination with neighboring countries,” the statement said.

The drones were launched from Iranian territory and carried firearms and ammunition, in an attempt to test whether military equipment could be smuggled to Gaza via UAV, Israeli officials estimated.

January 4, 2022
Israel shoots down Hezbollah drone

The Israeli military shot down a Hezbollah quadcopter that crossed into Israel from Lebanon. The IDF said it had been “monitored by our soldiers throughout the incident.”

Israel Defense Forces@IDF
We downed a Hezbollah drone that crossed from Lebanon into Israel today. The drone was monitored by our soldiers throughout the incident.

The IDF will continue to operate against any attempt by terrorists to violate Israeli sovereignty.

February 13, 2022
Iranian drone downed over Iraq

Iraqi media reported that a U.S. Air Force F-16 downed an Iranian drone over Iraq, with Israeli broadcaster Kan asserting that the Iranian UAV had been tasked with striking “Israeli targets in the Middle East.”

February 14, 2022
Alleged Israeli strike destroys Iranian drone fleet

An aerial attack in Iran last month caused heavy damage to the country’s drone network, with several estimates saying that hundreds of drones were destroyed. According to foreign reports, six Israeli drones struck a base in western Iran.

Tehran blamed Israel for the attack, but Israel has not admitted responsibility. Neither country had even mentioned the attack until it was reported for the first time on Sunday by the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese television station Al Mayadeen.

The New York Times later reported that some U.S. officials said the attack was has been carried out by Israeli operatives stationed in Iraq. According to another official, the site was Iran’s main manufacturing and storage plant for military drones.

February 18, 2022
Hezbollah drown enters Israeli airspace

A Hezbollah drone eluded early-detection systems to enter Israeli territory. It photographed several locations in the country’s north before returning to Lebanon allegedly untouched, according to a subsequent report by a Lebanese newspaper with close ties to Hezbollah.

The report in Al-Akhbar said the Israel Defense Forces were taken by surprise by what it called a “radio-controlled aircraft,” setting off sirens in the north. According to the Al-Akhbar report, both an Iron Dome missile fired at the drone and an F-16 fighter jet failed to intercept it, as did a subsequent attempt by Apache helicopters.

In an apparent warning to Hezbollah, Israeli warplanes later flew at low altitude over Beirut.

Astro@EyesonSouth
Hassan drone penetrated high-frequency & accurate sensor systems such as ADS monitoring system & overcame SIGNIT signal detection systems and bypassed the latest most advanced of these systems that hunts low-flying drones(Sky Dew).

March 8 2022
Israeli strike in Syria kills two Revolutionary Guard members

Two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were killed in a (non-drone) airstrike strike near Damascus, Iranian media reported, prompting the Iranians to vow to “make the Zionist regime pay for this crime.”

March 13, 2022
Iran launches ballistic missiles at ‘Israeli strategic centers’ in Iraq

As many as 12 missiles were fired toward the U.S. consulate in Irbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, in an attack subsequently described by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a strike against Israeli “strategic centers.”

Al Mayadeen cited Iranian sources as saying that the attack was not retaliation for Israel’s alleged killing of the two Iranian Revolutionary Guard members, but rather for other Israeli operations against Iranian targets. It stated that the ballistic missiles were fired at Mossad headquarters in Irbil, killing four Israeli officers and wounding seven. It declined to provide any proof for its assertions of Israeli casualties or a Mossad presence in the city.

Officials in Iraq and the United States gave different accounts of damage. A second U.S. official said there was no damage and no casualties at any U.S. government facility, but Iraqi officials said several missiles had hit the new, currently unoccupied U.S. consulate building.

Source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/TIMELINE-israel-iran-drone-war-goes-ballistic-a-timeline-1.10678441

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Israel’s Mossad suspected of high-level Iran penetration

Jiyar Gol - BBC — Sun, 06 Feb 2022 11:04:54 +0000

In November 2020, a convoy carrying Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s most prominent nuclear scientist, came under fire. He was killed with an artificial intelligence-assisted remote control machine gun.

Carrying out an assassination in such a surgical fashion against a moving target without any civilian casualties requires real-time intelligence on the ground.

After the killing, Iran’s intelligence minister, Mahmoud Alavi, claimed that two months earlier, he had warned security forces that there was an assassination plot targeting Mr. Fakhrizadeh at the exact location where he was shot.

Mr. Alavi said the person who planned the killing was “a member of the armed forces. We couldn’t carry out intelligence operations on the armed forces”.

But he indirectly implied the perpetrator was a member of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s most elite military unit. If so, the agent would have to have been high up enough in the IRGC to have been able to brush off the warning and carry out the plan at the set date, time and location.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is also known to have been a member of the IRGC.

Sources inside Tehran’s Evin prison security ward, where those who are accused of spying for foreign countries are held, have told the BBC there have been scores of high-ranking IRGC commanders held there.

The Iranian government does not publicize their names and ranks to avoid tarnishing the reputation of the Revolutionary Guards.

A former intelligence officer for the IRGC Quds Force (its overseas operations arm) has told the BBC foreign agencies have gathered evidence against a number of Iranian ambassadors and IRGC commanders.

He said it includes information about relationships with women, which he said could be used to blackmail those officials to force them to co-operate with foreign spies.

In late January 2018, in the dead of night, a dozen men broke into a storage facility in an industrial district, 20 miles (30km) from the capital, Tehran.

There were 32 safes, but they knew which ones contained the most valuable materials. In less than seven hours, they melted the locks of 27 of them, took half a tonne of clandestine nuclear archives and left without a trace. It was one of the most audacious heists in Iran’s history, but officials kept quiet.

Three months later, the stolen documents appeared 1,200 miles (2,000 km) away, in Tel Aviv in Israel.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Israeli prime minister, showcased the stolen material – the result, he said, of a Mossad operation. Iranian officials at the time called the documents fabrications and they said such an incident never took place.

On his last day in office, in August 2021, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed Israel stole Iran’s nuclear documents and showed the evidence to US President Donald Trump.

Presenting the archives at a specially convened news conference in April 2018, Mr. Netanyahu highlighted Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s role in what he said was an undeclared nuclear weapons programme.

“Dr Mohsen Fakhrizadeh… remember that name,” he reiterated. Mr. Fakhrizadeh was assassinated two years later.

‘Shoot, don’t talk’

In the past two decades, a number of Iran’s most prominent nuclear scientists have been killed. There have been multiple sabotages in Iran’s nuclear and military facilities, but so far the Iranian security forces have mainly failed to prevent or capture the assailants and plotters.

In the final year of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidency in 2013, there were rumours that IRGC commanders, intelligence officers and even panegyrists (officials who deliver religious eulogies) had been arrested for spying for the Mossad. But those allegations were never officially confirmed.

One of the accused was the officer in charge of counter-intelligence against Israel in Iran’s ministry of intelligence. An Iranian Revolutionary court quietly convicted him, sentenced him to death, and executed him without any publicity.

Iran and Israel’s shadow war takes a dangerous turn
Only last year, Mr Ahmadinejad confirmed the Mossad had infiltrated his intelligence ministry. He said: “Is it normal that the most senior officer responsible for the control of Israeli spies, responsible for confronting Israeli plots in Iran, himself turned out to be an Israeli agent?”

Israel rarely comments about the Mossad’s activities. Retired Israel Defense Forces (IDF) general and former defence ministry official Amos Gilad told the BBC this was for a good reason.

“I’m against any publicity. If you want to shoot, shoot, don’t talk… the Mossad’s reputation is to do fantastic operations, allegedly, clandestine, without publicity.”

Today, former Iranian officials are concerned that the Mossad has reached officials high up in Iranian security and intelligence institutions.

Ali Yunesi, a former Iranian intelligence minister and top adviser to President Rouhani, issued this warning in an interview: “The Mossad’s influence in many parts of the country is so vast that every member of the Iranian leadership should be worried for their lives, for their safety.”

You can watch Israel and Iran, The Hidden War at the following times (GMT in UK on BBC News Channel Sun 6 Feb 15:30 and Mon 7 Feb 02:30 and outside UK on BBC World News Sun 6 Feb 04:30; 10:30 and Tues 8 Feb 08:30

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-60250816

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The coming giant internal Israeli war over a nuclear Iran – A 2010 rematch

Yonah Jeremy Bob — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 07:45:44 +0000

Sources break down Israeli defense officials’ disagreements.

A member of Iranian Border Guards wears a protective face mask, following an outbreak of the new coronavirus, inside the Shalamcha Border Crossing, after Iraq shut a border crossing to travelers between Iraq and Iran, Iraq March 8, 2020 – (photo credit: REUTERS/ESSAM AL-SUDANI)

A massive internal storm may be coming that the coronavirus may delay, but cannot stop.

If it does, it will pit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and others against Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as IDF Chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. Aviv Kochavi, over how to deal with Iran.

According to numerous interviews by The Jerusalem Post with current and former Mossad, CIA and other national security officials in the US and Israel, a point may get closer where the Islamic Republic of Iran will escalate its levels of uranium enrichment dangerously close to levels where it could weaponize within a short period.

This will draw Netanyahu, Cohen and their camp closer to a desire to preemptively strike Iran, while Gantz, Ashkenazi, Kochavi and their camp are more likely to define the “point of no return” – after which Tehran cannot be stopped from going nuclear – as a good bit later.

This debate would echo the all-out fight between Netanyahu and Gantz and Ashkenazi in 2010 and afterwards.

During that period, the Blue and White MKs followed each other as IDF chiefs and, especially Ashkenazi, helped block an Israeli preemptive strike, along with then-Mossad chiefs Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo.

Pardo has since confirmed that he even discussed the issue with then-attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein. He explained that he believed a Netanyahu order to move pieces in place for a near-immediate attack on Iran without full security cabinet approval was illegal and said Weinstein confirmed his position.

There are multiple narratives, with one involving confusing moves by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak to merely scare the world into thinking they would attack.

But the majority public narrative is that the defense establishment’s opposition blocked Netanyahu and Barak from launching an attack.

Most expert estimates already have Tehran’s time to break out for a nuclear bomb – if it chooses to do so, which all agree it has not yet – down from 12 months to between three and a half to six months.

In early March, the usually relatively Iran-friendly International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the ayatollahs already had enough low-level (between 3.67-5%) enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon – should Iran make the decision to enrich to higher levels.

Multiple intelligence sources have indicated to the Post a belief that the Islamic Republic may jump to 20% enrichment, a step it took before the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Some sources even speculated that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may greenlight a small amount of enrichment at the 60% level (uranium becomes weaponized at the 90% level) – an idea the country already played with months ago, but has not yet carried out.

But sources have indicated that top intelligence officials in favor of an earlier military option to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb are not looking at just one specific factor.

Rather, they are looking at the full picture of Tehran’s actions, which will indicate whether it has made the decision to go to the threshold.

According to intelligence officials who view the point of no return as an earlier point in time, they look at nuclear enrichment as a more decisive factor for interpreting Iran’s intentions than the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Put differently, they believe Israel would need to act militarily once Iran has enough nuclear material for a weapon, and that it could not wait for the point at which it is confirmed that Iran can properly fire the weapon.

The rationale of these intelligence officials is that enriching uranium and working on weapons delivery issues, though separate skills to master, do not need to happen in a chronological fashion.

Instead, intelligence officials have noted to the Post that the Islamic Republic could be working through problems with delivering a nuclear warhead on its Shahab 3 missile or other missiles in parallel to its uranium enrichment.

Further, these officials said once Iran gets to within a certain proximity to enough weaponized material for a nuclear bomb, the uncertainties – which might drag out the process by some period of weeks or might be solved immediately – are too fluid.

THERE IS a lesson from the North Korea case.

With North Korea, at some point, the world was surprised by how slow it moved forward with developing nuclear weapons. However, later it shocked the world by being months ahead of what was expected. Exporting this lesson to Iran, it means the point of no return cannot wait for the clock to run out entirely.

Those intelligence officials in this camp are also keeping a careful eye on relations between the IAEA and the ayatollahs. Relations have gotten shakier since the March report, which used harsher language than usual against the regime.

In contrast, in January, Kochavi publicly laid out that he did not view Iran as a real nuclear threat until deep into 2021.

The Post has asked the IDF if Kochavi might move his calendar up by nine months since he also predicted in January that Tehran would not have enough low-enriched uranium for a bomb before December. Yet, the regime crossed that threshold already in March.

The IDF did not respond and has not issued a revised timeline.

This suggests that the IDF will not change its calendar as long as Iran is not enriching uranium to higher levels.

However, even more significantly, Kochavi explicitly treated the issues of uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons delivery as separate and chronological. He said weapons delivery pushed the nuclear threat off until deep into 2021.

It appears that this was the position of Ashkenazi and Gantz back in the 2010 era when they held Kochavi’s job.

At that point – and leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal – Iran went far beyond where it is today with nuclear enrichment, yet they were still dead set against Netanyahu and Barak’s discussion/order to attack.

Before the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had enough low-enriched uranium for around 10 nuclear bombs and had substantial amounts of uranium enriched to the 20% level – which it has not done yet this time.

So even if Khamenei brings Iran far beyond its current uranium stock of low-enriched uranium for one weapon, and if he orders uranium enrichment at the 20% level, a rematch could mean Netanyahu’s Blue and White partners trying to hold him back from an attack.

Kochavi in the present, and Gantz, Ashkenazi, Dagan, and Pardo from the past and present, in part represent an IDF mentality of needing to juggle short-term threats, like Hezbollah and Hamas, with long-term threats. They also represent an intelligence perspective beyond the IDF that even a surgical strike solely on Iran’s nuclear facilities could likely lead to a broader war with Iran and its proxies.

In contrast, Netanyahu and Cohen now, and Barak in the past, represented a mentality that the risks of Iran developing a nuclear weapon are so great (that it might use a weapon or that it could use the weapon to act more aggressively in the region) that it trumps other risks and warrants acting sooner.

This future internal war, a rematch of the 2010 era, could decide the fate of the country.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/The-coming-giant-internal-Israeli-war-over-a-nuclear-Iran-A-2010-rematch-624452

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TV report: Israel silent as Iran hit by computer virus more violent than Stuxnet

Times of Israel staff — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 10:08:42 +0000

Tehran strategic networks attacked, Hadashot TV says, hours after Israel revealed it tipped off Denmark about Iran murder plot, and days after Rouhani’s phone was found bugged.

In this Feb. 3, 2007 file photo, an Iranian technician works at the Uranium Conversion Facility just outside the city of Isfahan 255 miles (410 kilometers) south of the capital Tehran, Iran. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi, File)

Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,” and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday.

The report came hours after Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency had thwarted an Iranian murder plot in Denmark, and two days after Iran acknowledged that President Hassan Rouhani’s mobile phone had been bugged. It also follows a string of Israeli intelligence coups against Iran, including the extraction from Tehran in January by the Mossad of the contents of a vast archive documenting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and the detailing by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the UN in September of other alleged Iranian nuclear and missile assets inside Iran, in Syria and in Lebanon.

“Remember Stuxnet, the virus that penetrated the computers of the Iranian nuclear industry?” the report on Israel’s Hadashot news asked. Iran “has admitted in the past few days that it is again facing a similar attack, from a more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated virus than before, that has hit infrastructure and strategic networks.”

The Iranians, the TV report went on, are “not admitting, of course, how much damage has been caused.”

On Sunday, Gholamreza Jalali, the head of Iran’s civil defense agency, said Tehran had neutralized a new version of Stuxnet, Reuters reported.“Recently we discovered a new generation of Stuxnet which consisted of several parts … and was trying to enter our systems,” Jalali said.

The Stuxnet virus was uncovered some eight years ago, and was widely reported to have been developed together by US and Israeli intelligence. It penetrated Iran’s rogue nuclear program, taking control and sabotaging parts of its enrichment processes by speeding up its centrifuges.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on an archive brought out of Iran by the Mossad that documents Iran’s nuclear program, at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2018. (AFP/Jack Guez)

Netanyahu is adamant that the Iranian regime remains determined to attain a nuclear weapons arsenal, and has bitterly opposed the P5+1 powers’ 2015 deal with Iran. US President Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu is closely allied, withdrew from the accord in May.

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Referring to Stuxnet, Wednesday’s TV report noted that “in the past, the US and Israel have been alleged to have worked together on operations.” Trying to establish whether Israel had any role in the latest cyberattack, the TV report said: “We’ve tried to clarify here. They’re refusing to comment.”

The TV report noted that “behind the scenes lately, the Mossad,” under its director Yossi Cohen, has been “fighting a real shadow war.”

Without attributing responsibility to the Mossad, the report mentioned the tapping of Rouhani’s phone, noting that the Iranians “had to switch it for an encrypted model because they understand that someone has been listening to him for days and weeks.”

On Sunday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged intensified efforts to counter enemy “infiltration,” Reuters said.

In a speech to officials in charge of cyber defense, Khamenei said: “In the face of the enemy’s complex practices, our civil defense should… confront infiltration through scientific, accurate, and up-to-date… action,” the report said, quoting Iranian state TV.

Yossi Cohen, the head of the Mossad, is seen in a committee meeting at the Israeli parliament on December 8, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Read: Mutually assured cyber destruction?

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. (Screen capture: Khamenei.ir)

Earlier Wednesday, Israeli officials said the Mossad provided its Danish counterpart with information concerning an alleged plot by Tehran to assassinate three Iranian opposition figures living in the Scandinavian country. According to the officials, the Mossad gave Denmark information about a plot to kill three Iranians suspected of belonging to the anti-regime Arab Struggle Movement for the Liberation of Ahvaz.

The intelligence reportedly provided by the Mossad prompted the arrest of a Norwegian national of Iranian origin earlier this month. Denmark on Tuesday recalled its ambassador to Iran over the incident.

“What Iran hides, Israel will find,” Netanyahu declared in his September UN speech.

Agencies contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/tv-report-israel-silent-as-iran-hit-by-computer-virus-more-violent-than-stuxnet/

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