The Gaza war has dominated our lives in Israel and seized the attention of much of the world since October 7, and how it ends will have implications for the region for years to come.
But it will end – with the full-intensity stage of the conflict facing a three to five week deadline.
In contrast, the assassination of Sayyed Reza Mousavi, a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), in an alleged Israeli airstrike in the vicinity of the Syrian capital of Damascus, and an attempted terror attack by Iranian proxies on an Israeli embassy in India on Tuesday are part of a shadow war which is decades old, and which will likely continue for decades.
If the Gaza war and its aftermath may determine much of the outlook for Israel in its neighborhood for the next five years, the shadow war with the Islamic Republic may be the overarching theme for the next 50.
Mousavi was not just any IRGC commander. Rather, he was responsible for coordinating the financing and logistics of transferring weapons from Tehran to proxies in Syria.
Mousavi would be the highest profile killing of an Iranian in years
He was also considered extremely close to Qasem Soleimani, the former head of the Quds Force who was killed by a US drone, aided by aspects of Israeli intelligence, in January 2020.
While the Mossad was given credit by Iran for assassinating its nuclear chief Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in November 2020, and a wide range of nuclear science experts, weapons experts, and terror officials from April to June 2022, Mousavi would be the highest profile killing of an Iranian in years.
The killing of Mousavi, presuming it was carried out by Israel, would thus seem to be not only a message to Iran to stay out of Syria but also the most damaging response yet by Jerusalem against the Islamic Republic for its sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Although Israel and the United States, as well as Iran – in most of its statements – and Hamas have all said that the ayatollahs had no direct connection to the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel, the Islamic Republic’s funding, logistics help, and training of Gaza’s terror rulers for years is well-known.
Moreover, in February of this year, The Jerusalem Post was told that Iran would be trying to use its proxies against Israel in more aggressive ways than before.
And Iran did give a direct order to Hezbollah to attack Israel on October 8, once the current war had broken out.
Besides the attack on Mousavi, there have been other messages from Israel to Iran.
On December 18, almost simultaneous to an accusation by Israel’s National Cyber Directorate against Iran for hacking attacks on the Jewish state, a hacktivist group called Predatory Sparrow (Gonjeshke Darande in Persian) claimed that it had disabled the majority of gas stations across Iran in a cyberattack.
In the past, Predatory Sparrow has been alleged to be affiliated with Israel and the Mossad.
There were also mysterious incidents and explosions in Iran on September 26 and November 26, one of which might have been at or near a nuclear site, which may also have had some connection with Israel – although the connection there is more tenuous.
On December 3, an attack on Yemen’s Houthis, who by order of Iran have been launching missile and drone attacks against Israel, was attributed to Israel.
Whether or not all of those attacks were from Israel, the Mossad has been credited by foreign sources with major attacks on Iran’s drone and nuclear facilities in June-August 2020, April 2021, June 2021, September 2021, February 2022, and January 2023.
This is without even mentioning Israel’s heist of Tehran’s nuclear secrets on January 31, 2018 – an action which led the US to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal and to the IAEA turning against Iran for its nuclear violations.
From the Iranian side, the explosive attack near the Israeli embassy in New Delhi was only the latest in a wide series of its own shadow efforts against Israel.
Two suspects were observed near the explosion site on CCTV footage and a letter written in English addressed to the Israeli ambassador, which used attacking language, was also discovered near the site. Indian media attributed the attack to a group called Sir Allah Resistance, with the letter using words such as “Zionist,” “Gaza,” and “Palestine.”
A source from the Indian Jewish community told the Post on Tuesday: “The explosion was very big, not something we are used to hearing. It was a great miracle that there were no casualties.” The source emphasized, “It’s not clear if it [the bombing] was against Israel or not. But it was close to the Israeli embassy.”
Iranian proxies have attacked Israelis in India at least twice before. There was another explosion at the Israeli embassy in India in January 2021, damaging several vehicles.
In a Channel 12 interview with Israeli Ambassador to India Ron Malka nearly three years ago, Malka emphasized that the incident occurred exactly at the time when the workers were supposed to leave the embassy. A terror group called Jaish-ul-Hind, viewed as affiliated with Iran, took responsibility for that attack. Even before that, there had also been a terror