Israel's former national security adviser warned on Monday that a recent spate of attacks on Iranian assets that were linked to Israel will only make Tehran more determined to harm Israeli targets in revenge.
Yaakov Amidror, a former major general and a current senior fellow at the conservative security think tank the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies, told Ynet that Israel deviated from the rules of engagement it itself had set against its arch-nemesis Iran, citing the assassination of a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) member and a blast at a sensitive military site in Parchin last week, which were both linked to Israel.
"We have worked very intensively in Syria and Iran in the past — according to foreign sources — from the assassination of the head of the nuclear program to the killing of a senior in the Islamic State, but this time around, we've seen a shift," he said.
"Now, the threat is also against senior 'rank-in-file' officers in the Revolutionary Guards, with a clear goal to exact a personal toll for their actions against Israel.
The Iranians were previously unable to carry out any high-level responses, so maybe they think they've got a score to settle. Maybe through airstrikes, an area in which the Iranians have failed too in the past when they tried reaching Israel with drones that were intercepted in one way or another. The question is how prepared we are for a potential Iranian response."
The hawkish erstwhile general also noted that the travel warning for Turkey issued by the National Security Council (NSC) indicated that Israel had concrete intelligence about an Iranian plot to harm Israelis in the country.