Monday, July 23, 2012

Iran's balance of terror



Iran's balance of terror


Dr. Ephraim Kam


Even before it was clear what had happened in Burgas, Bulgaria, and who was behind the terrorist attack, Jerusalem had already pointed an accusatory finger toward Iran. Even though Hezbollah was also mentioned as being involved, mainly because it is still trying to avenge the assassination of its former military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hurried to declare that all signs pointed to Iran as the responsible party.


Without yet knowing at this stage what those exact signs are, there is a degree of justification to such a conclusion. Since 1979, Iran has been officially categorized by successive U.S. governments as the state most involved in terrorist activities. Iran earned the title because of two reasons:


Firstly, Iran employs a large and organized apparatus for conducting terrorist activity, which is connected at one end to the Islamic republic's spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who makes the final decision to carry out important terror attacks. The operational arm is the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds force, which is aided by Iranian intelligence agencies. Secondly, the scope of Iranian targets is extremely wide. These include those considered to be enemies of the regime, mostly prominent members of the former shah's regime operating inside and outside Iran, targets in Arab and Muslim countries that Iran has an interest in hitting, targets in Western countries and Israeli and Jewish targets.


In the mid-1990s there was a certain decline in the scope of Iran's involvement in terrorism for a number of reasons, including: a decrease in the number of opponents, including from the shah's regime, because they had either been executed or had escaped the country; the end of the the Iran-Iraq war in 1988; and the 1992 revelation that Iranian intelligence was behind the assassination of Kurdish opposition members in a Berlin restaurant. Iranian agents were actually caught during the incident, and during their subsequent trial German intelligence embarrassed the regime by shedding light on Iran's terrorist activities. All those reasons, not to mention 9/11, forced Iran to lower its profile.


However, Iran's terrorist activity aimed at Israel never abated.


On the contrary, Iran has an increasing interest in hurting Israel, for a number of reasons. Firstly, Iran supports Hezbollah with weapons, equipment and logistics. It makes its terrorist infrastructure available to Hezbollah operatives and opens its embassies around the world to them for the purpose of transferring arms, shelter and evasion.


Just as Iran helped Hezbollah carry out the two terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Argentina in the 1990s to avenge the assassination by Israel of its former leader Abbas al-Musawi, it has an interest today, too, in helping Hezbollah avenge Mughniyeh's death. Secondly, Iran currently has its own reasons to carry out attacks against Israel. Iran is troubled by the string of assassinations of its nuclear scientists, and by the computer viruses targeting the regime and its nuclear program. It attributes the attacks to Israel and is looking for ways to deter further Israeli action. Moreover, Iran wants to show Israel that wide-ranging terrorist attacks will be part of its response if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities.


Despite promises by Israeli leaders that the perpetrators of the Burgas attack will be caught, this will not be such a simple matter. Exacting a price from Hezbollah requires that Israel be cautious not to overreact, and the same is even more true with Iran. As a rule of thumb, Israel, as well as other countries, has never responded to a terror attack by directly punishing Iran for its involvement. Israel, too, is vulnerable on that front, and doesn't wish to open a war of terrorism against Iran.


Israel's response to Iran, if it comes, will need to be weighed against the big picture of the struggle against Iran, specifically over its nuclear program.


http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=2277

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