Israeli and Turkish intelligence services recently foiled an Iranian plot to attack Israeli targets on Turkish soil, senior Israeli officials told Ynet on Sunday.
"Things are really heating up there," one official said, confirming there had been a recent rise in Iran's attempts to carry out attacks.
The successful joint operation of Turkey's intelligence agencies MIT comes less than two weeks after Israel's National Security Council issued a severe travel warning urging Israelis to avoid traveling to the country and several other destinations bordering Iran, for fearing Iranian revenge for the assassination of high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officer Col. Hassan Sayad Khodaei that was attributed to Israel.
The Prime Minister's Office said at the time there was a credible threat to the safety of Israelis and urged extra caution when traveling to those destinations.
Several high-profile deaths have struck the Islamic Republic in recent weeks. According to Iran International, a Saudi-funded news agency tied to Iran's opposition, one of the recently the officials who were killed recently was aeronautics expert Ayoob Entezari who was poisoned at a dinner to which he was invited. Entezari was reportedly linked to Tehran's military drone enterprise, among other projects.
Tehran tried to present the slain scientist as a rank-in-file worker for a private company, but in a recently surfaced video, Entezari can be seen with then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani during a visit to a facility in the city of Yazd.
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Iranian aeronautics expert Ayoob Entezari (in circle) and then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani during a visit to a facility in Yazd, Iran
(Photo: Taken from Twitter)
Meanwhile, smaller media outlets in Iran also reported the death of Kamran Malapour, an Iranian nuclear scientist who worked at the Natanz facility which has been hit in the past by several blasts that were also attributed to Israel.
The death of the two scientists was not reported by official Iranian media, but the timing of the incidents has sparked a wide interest.
Col. Ali Esmaelzadeh, a senior member of the Quds Force Unit 840 of the IRGC, has also died under unclear circumstances. According to Iran International, Esmaelzadeh fell to his death from the roof of his home in northern Iran.
According to the report, the IRGC informed his family that he had committed suicide, leaving a letter behind. The website cited sources who claimed that the IRGC was behind Esmaelzadeh's death after suspicion arose that he had leaked information that led to the assassination of Khodaei. Iran has denied the allegations.