Israel says Iran is sponsoring rocket attacks

By Michael Crowley

As Congress nears a vote on the Iranian nuclear deal, Israel says Tehran is responsible for a “indiscriminate and premeditated terrorist attack” from Syrian territory.

Israel says Iran was behind rocket attacks into its territory from Syria last week, raising new questions about Tehran’s regional aggression in the wake of last month’s nuclear agreement.
Following the rocket attacks, which Israel says were coordinated by an Iranian military commander, Israeli diplomats have filed a formal complaint with the U.S. and its partners in the July 14 nuclear accord charging Iran with “an indiscriminate and premeditated terrorist attack against Israeli territory without any provocation.”

No Israelis were injured in the Thursday attack, and some see the complaint as diplomatic theater by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, designed to undermine the deal ahead of a planned mid-September vote in Congress.
One Arab newspaper charged that Israel was manufacturing a crisis on the Syrian border to influence the U.S. vote: “Israel wants to mobilize the American Jewish side, before the vote in Congress on the nuclear deal,” wrote the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai, according to a Jerusalem Post report.
Israel officials insist that the attack — the first use of rockets from Syria in more than 40 years — is deadly serious, and a sign that Iran may be looking to expand its options for menacing Israel.
The effect of the nuclear deal on Iran’s regional behavior has been a main point of contention, with Israeli officials insisting that Iran should not be allowed any domestic nuclear program unless it first forswears aggression against Israel.
“Fundamentally, there’s something untenable about Iran claiming that it is in a negotiating process with the West while it reserves the right to wage war against America’s allies in the Middle East,” Dore Gold, director general of Israel’s foreign ministry, told POLITICO in an interview.
On Friday, Israeli diplomats submitted their complaint to each of the countries that are party to the Iran nuclear deal: the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia.
The démarche said the attack on Israel from Syria, allegedly led by an Iranian Quds Force official, “occurred before the ink on the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] nuclear agreement has even dried and provided a clear indication of how Iran intends to continue to pursue its destabilizing actions and policies as the international sanctions regime is withdrawn in the near future.”
“The international community … cannot enable Iran to gain respectability and political legitimacy from the JCPOA, which in parallel it continues to actively and directly perpetrate terror throughout the region,” it said.
A State Department official did not respond to a request for comment.
Israeli officials blamed Thursday’s attack on militants affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a radical group headquartered in Gaza with some fighters based in Syria. Israel says the group depends on Tehran for funding and direction.
The attack was directed by Saeed Izaadhi, according to Israeli officials who identified him as the head of the Palestinian unit of the Iranian military’s Quds Force.
“This attack on Israeli territory was directed by Iran,” Gold said. “In other words, the Iranians launched aggression against Israel using a surrogate organization.”
Only four rockets were fired into Israel’s Golan Heights and northern Galilee, all of them exploding harmlessly in open areas. But Israeli officials were unusually disturbed because the area has traditionally been calm. Israel has been struck by mortar fire from Syria in recent years, although officials say some of that has been incidental spillover from conflict across the border.
Israel quickly retaliated with heavy artillery fire. A Friday airstrike then destroyed a car carrying five Palestinian militants behind the initial attack, Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement. After the initial attack, the U.S. Embassy in Israel warned American citizens to “possibly defer travel” to the popular tourist area around the Sea of Galilee, replete with Biblical holy sites.
Netanyahu’s government has two major lines of argument against the nuclear deal. One is that it conceded too much in allowing Iran to retain a domestic uranium enrichment program, abandoning past Western demands that Iran have none.
The other, reflected in the complaint, is that the deal does nothing to limit — and might even encourage — Iranian aggression across the Middle East. Israeli officials warn that Tehran will direct billions of the dollars it will reap from an end to economic sanctions towards its anti-Israel proxies in the region.
That could pose a greater menace to Israel in the years ahead.
Iran has long sponsored militant groups on Israel’s borders which have attacked Israel with rockets and terrorism. In southern Lebanon, Iran funds and supplies Hezbollah, which threatens Israel’s northern border and against which Israel went to war in 2006. In Gaza, on Israel’s southwestern border, Iran has long sponsored Hamas and, particularly as Iran-Hamas relations have frayed in recent years, Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Israel has watched Syria warily as the civil war there has unfolded over the past 4½ years. Its military has largely stayed on the sidelines, while occasionally striking against what it says are militants arming for possible attacks.
The civil war is a mixed bag for an Israeli government which long enjoyed an uneasy truce with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Although Assad’s government does not accept Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights, strategically vital high ground it seized during the 1967 Six Day War, it generally avoids confrontation with Israel.
The last rocket attacks from Syrian territory into Israel’s northeast occurred during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, according to Israeli officials.
But the civil war has eroded Assad’s control as Islamist groups gain strength. Thus far, however, those groups remain focused on fighting Assad and one another, said Michael Herzog, a retired brigadier general in the Israeli Defense Forces.
Amid the chaos, Israeli officials say, Iran is seeking a new foothold near the Golan Heights from which it can threaten Israel. Iran wields great influence in Damascus and backs Assad against insurgents with money, weapons and Hezbollah fighters.
“The Iranian regime, through its Al-Quds Force, commander Qassem Soleimani and his envoys to Syria and Lebanon, seeks to open up a terrorist front against Israel from the Golan Heights, and is smuggling weapons and training terrorist squads for that purpose,” Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said last week.
Hard-line Iranian officials often call for Israel’s destruction. Short of that, proxy forces like Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad provide Tehran with deterrence against a possible Israeli military strike on its nuclear program.
In the weeks after the nuclear deal, Secretary of State John Kerry has led a renewed diplomatic effort to negotiate a settlement for Syria’s civil war.
The question of Iranian influence in Syria and neighboring Lebanon — and the threat it poses to Israel — could be a major stumbling block, however.
“What [last week’s attack] tells me is Iran has no intentional of changing its regional behavior,” Herzog said. “To the contrary, I would say they feel empowered.”