The shadow war raging between Israel and Iran has shaped the Middle East for decades. Of the many conflicts that have rocked the region, theirs has long been one of the most explosive, Bloomberg reports in an article.

The two sides, however, have so far avoided escalation through direct conflict with Iran, mainly choosing to attack through Tehran-backed groups.

Now, as fighting between Israel and the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas continues and other armed groups are involved regionally, the shadow war has entered a dangerous new phase.

Iran’s state television reported on April 1 that an Israeli airstrike targeting the country’s diplomatic buildings in the Syrian capital, Damascus, killed, among others, a top commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s top security force. It was the latest deadly strike in months on Syria’s Revolutionary Guards that Iran blamed on Israel.

From allied enemies

Israel and Iran were allies in the 1950s during the reign of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, but their bilateral relations ended in 1979 with the Islamic Revolution in Iran. The country’s new leaders adopted a strong anti-Israel stance, characterizing the Jewish state as an imperialist power in the Middle East. Iran has supported groups that regularly attack Israel, notably Hamas, which the US and the European Union designate as a terrorist organization, and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Israel views Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons as a threat to its existence, with Iran’s leaders denying the claim. However, in 2018, following a Mossad operation, Israel revealed a huge archive of stolen Iranian nuclear plans, which they claimed showed Tehran had not given up its efforts to build nukes. Israel has repeatedly warned that if Iran gains the ability to build nuclear weapons, it will attack its nuclear program through airstrikes, as it did in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007.

A multi-front battle

Lebanon is the oldest front in the battle between Israel and Iran. In response to Israel’s invasion of the country’s south in 1982, a militia, later Hezbollah, was formed by Lebanese Muslims who belonged to the Shiite branch of Islam that dominates Iran. The group is partially supported by the Revolutionary Guards. Israel and Hezbollah have clashed repeatedly, including a war in 2006. Since October 7, Hezbollah, in support of Hamas, has fired rockets, mortars and rockets into Israel almost daily, prompting Israel to respond with its own. of fire.

During the Syrian civil war, Iran maintains its own military presence in the country to support its ally, President Bashar al-Assad, but also to facilitate the transfer of weapons destined for Hezbollah from Iran to Lebanon through Iraq and Syria. In an effort to stem the flow of arms and deal with this second hostile presence on its northern border, Israel has carried out hundreds of raids in Syria against arms shipments and other targets it says are linked to Iran and its allies, killing some Iranian cases. After October 7, Israel stepped up strikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria after they moved close to the Israeli border.

Iran claimed its Jan. 15 attack on an Israeli “espionage headquarters” in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region was in retaliation for a Dec. 25 Israeli airstrike in Damascus that killed a senior Revolutionary Guard commander.

According to Bloomberg, Iran has launched multiple attacks in Kurdistan since late 2022 as it accuses separatist Kurdish groups in the region of working with foreign security agencies against it. Israel has previously used facilities in northern Iraq to gather intelligence on Iran, according to multiple reports.

In 2018, Iranian forces fire a barrage of rockets at Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, a plateau that Israel seized from Syria in the 1967 war and later annexed. Israel responded with much stronger blows.

For its part, Israel is widely believed to be behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, as well as several attacks on nuclear facilities inside Iran. In April 2021, Iran blamed Israel and vowed revenge for an explosion at its largest uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, which it said caused significant damage. It was the second time in less than a year that the site had been hit. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the two attacks.

In mid-February, Iran said Israel was behind an attack on its natural gas transmission network that caused supply disruptions. A year ago, two American newspapers reported that Israel was behind a drone attack on an Iranian ammunition depot near the central city of Isfahan in an attack by. In 2021, an Iranian general blamed Israel for a cyberattack that paralyzed gas stations across Iran.

Attacks on ships

Another facet of the shadow war is the attacks on merchant shipping that began in 2019, opening yet another regional front previously limited to land and air. While neither Israel nor Iran have claimed responsibility for the strikes on ships linked to the rival country, they are widely believed to be behind them. Loss of life has been rare, but in July 2021, a British and a Romanian crew member were killed when an Israeli-owned ship was struck in the Gulf of Oman by a drone that US officials linked to Iran. Previous targets have included Iranian tankers carrying oil bound for Syria, but also an Iranian ship off the coast of Yemen that served as a floating base for the Revolutionary Guards. Correspondingly, Iran has been striking cargo ships owned or linked to Israelis.

In an escalation of attacks at sea, since October 7, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who have controlled northwestern Yemen since the civil war broke out in 2014, have attempted to strike Israel with missiles and drones while repeatedly attack ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis claim to be targeting ships linked to Israel—or the US or the UK, which in turn have launched airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen in response.
Attacks inside the two countries