As reports emerged on Thursday of another Iranian attack on an Israeli civilian ship, it appeared that the confrontation between Iran and Israel was escalating dangerously at sea.
This fits a pattern that has developed in recent months. Iran took a more aggressive stance on several fronts, both rhetorically and in its operations, as tensions increased with the new US government and Iran’s opponents in the region.
Thursday’s attack was not the first time that Iran allegedly hit an Israeli cargo ship. On February 26, an explosion hit Israeli MV Helios Ray, a cargo ship with the Bahamas flag, in the Gulf of Oman. Netanyahu accused Iran of attacking the ship. Iran quickly denied the charge, but experts say the attack carries marks from previous attacks attributed to Tehran.
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The operation appears to have been carefully planned and reflected a series of attacks on oil tankers in 2019 and an Iranian campaign against shipping vessels four decades ago.
The Thursday morning incident – in which an Israeli-owned ship was allegedly attacked by missiles in the Gulf of Oman – did not come from the air. According to The Wall Street Journal, Israel has been carrying out secret attacks against Iranian ships and other ships with Iranian cargo. If true, the latest attack may well be part of a more assertive Iranian response to such actions.
The report said Israel is targeting at least 12 ships bound for Syria, most of which are carrying Iranian oil, in violation of international sanctions, with mines and other weapons. Some of the alleged Israeli attacks, which took place in the Red Sea and elsewhere, targeted arms shipments linked to Iran, the report said. The attacks did not sink the tankers, but forced at least two of the ships to return to the Iranian port.
Israel tried to stop the oil trade because it believed profits were financing regional extremists, the report said.
The Israeli ship route #lori immediately after being attacked. There were no casualties or injuries, the ship continued its journey towards India pic.twitter.com/6MdN6hN02f
– Francesco (@FrankCalcagno) March 25, 2021
If Israel has in fact been attacking Iranian shipping for more than a year, why has the Islamic Republic decided to respond now?
On the one hand, Tehran is desperate to respond to a series of military setbacks. Senior Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was traveling on a highway outside the capital in November 2020 when he was killed by what was reported as a remote-controlled machine gun. Tehran blamed Israel.
The murder came after months of mysterious explosions in Iran, including an explosion and fire that paralyzed an advanced centrifuge assembly plant at Natanz’s uranium enrichment facility, which is believed to have been an act of sabotage allegedly carried out by Israel.
In addition, Iran remains under severe U.S. sanctions, which it is looking forward to finding a way out of.
While Syria is consumed by a decade-long civil war, Iran is trying to open a new front on the border with Israel. He sent forces allied to the Golan Heights in Syria to create an infrastructure to carry out attacks on Israeli targets. It has also been working to arm its Hezbollah proxy terrorist group with precision rockets, sending weapons across Syria to Lebanon.
However, Israel has demonstrated competence in sniffing out Iranian actions and a firm willingness to stop them using military force, launching hundreds, even thousands, of attacks against Iran and its representatives in Syria and Iraq since 2011.
Lebanese Hezbollah supporters carry the coffin of Jihad Mughniyeh, killed in an alleged Israeli air strike, during his funeral in a southern suburb of Beirut on January 19, 2015. (Joseph Eid / AFP)
“This fits with Iran being frustrated in its efforts to reach Israel from Syria, where Israel dominates, now acting in its own backyard against Israel because, in the first place, it is a proven modus operandi,” said Michael Eisenstadt, director of Washington Institute for Near East Policy Military and Security Studies Program.
At the same time, Iran is operating with renewed confidence. Donald Trump – the unpredictable and combative President of the United States who dropped out of the nuclear deal and ordered the assassination of Revolutionary Guard Quds Force extraterritorial commander Qassem Soleimani – is out of office in the United States. His successor, Joe Biden, seems determined to avoid being sucked into the Middle East and has declared his desire to return to the 2015 nuclear deal.
Biden also signaled that he will be less unconditionally generous with the Arab and Israeli anti-Iran bloc countries: he waited weeks to call Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after his election; he started to squeeze Saudi Arabia into its human rights record; In February, his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, expressed concern to Egypt about its human rights policies and plans to buy Russian fighters.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks about foreign policy at the State Department on March 3, 2021 in Washington. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds / Pool via AP)
And the existence of the WSJ article itself, based on conversations with American officials, may be an indication of the Biden government’s discontent with Israel.
“In my opinion, the Americans have leaked the report,” said Raz Zimmt, an Iranian scholar at the Institute for National Security Studies. “Apparently, they are not very happy with what we are doing, which may be the most interesting aspect of this whole story.”
As Iran perceives the daylight emerging between the United States and its allies, it has been making moves across the region.
Dr. Raz Zimmt (YouTube screenshot)
In Iraq, a series of rocket attacks in February hit near the U.S. embassy and bases that house US forces. Earlier this month, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said they attacked a Saudi oil facility in the port city of Jeddah.
Iran has also projected confidence around its nuclear program. Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday reiterated the Islamic Republic’s “definitive policy” that Washington must lift all sanctions before Tehran returns to its commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal. Tehran has consistently violated the deal’s restrictions, including the amount of enriched uranium that it can store and the purity with which it can enrich it.
“This may be connected to the new administration,” said Zimmt. “And for the Iranian estimate that the danger that has existed in the past few months under Trump is gone, then they can go further.
“They can also estimate that Israel is limited, although I don’t know if that is a correct assumption – but they may think that Israel’s freedom of action is limited because of the new government and because of the political crisis. So, they are willing to take risks that they were not willing to take in the past. “
