How have Israeli intelligence agents penetrated the most top-secret nuclear sites in the Islamic Republic? How did they manage to assassinate wanted targets who did everything they humanly could to stay out of the public eye? Well, according to The New York Times, that’s what Iran wants to know. Israeli “attacks have cast a cloud of paranoia over a country that now sees foreign plots in every mishap.”

The report added that what is most alarming for Iran is that the attacks show that Israel has a network of collaborators inside Iran. “Iran has turned into a haven for spies,” said the head of the Iranian Parliament’s strategic center.

“That the Israelis are effectively able to hit Iran inside in such a brazen way is hugely embarrassing and demonstrates a weakness that I think plays poorly inside Iran,” said Sanam Vakil, deputy director of the Middle East and North Africa Program at Chatham House.

The mysterious death on Monday of Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hosseinzadeh Hejazi, the mastermind of the 1994 bombing at the AMIA Jewish center in Argentina, of a “heart attack” at the age of 65 has heightened the level of paranoia in Iran. Hejazi was known to be a wanted Israeli target and the son of a senior Quds Force commander wrote on Twitter that Hejazi’s death was “not cardiac-related.”

The statement of a Revolutionary Guards spokesman that Hejazi had died of the combination of “extremely difficult assignments, a recent COVID infection, and exposure to chemical weapons,” did nothing to quell the rumors.

If Hejazi was assassinated, he would be the third high-ranking Iranian general to be killed in a little over a year, with the first two being Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani, who was eliminated by the US in January 2020, and nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was eliminated by Israel in November 2020.

What bothers the Iranians the most is that the Israeli sabotage and targeted killings could not be carried out without inside help from Iranians. The former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is responsible for guarding nuclear sites and scientists, is pushing for a total overhaul of Iran’s security and intelligence services. Some are demanding a “cleansing” of the Guards and others are saying that the unit should be “held accountable for its failures.”

The deputy head of Parliament, Amir-Hossein Ghazizadeh Hashemi, told the Iranian media that Iran needs to stop pointing a finger at Israel and the US and start focusing on “cleaning its own house.”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)