In Target Tehran, Israeli journalists Ilan Evyatar and Yonah Jeremy Bob delve into the clandestine and unending undeclared war between Iran and Israel
Israeli journalists Ilan Evyatar and Yonah Jeremy Bob’s Target Tehran (Simon & Schuster) makes it more than clear — albeit unwittingly — that the brutal war Israel is now waging may be against the Hamas but the real target is the Islamic Republic of Iran, the one country whose stated goal is the destruction of the Jewish state. The meticulously researched book is, of course, not about the Gaza Strip or the horrific conflict which an unapologetic Israel says can continue for months, whatever the toll or consequences. It is about how Iran is engaged in efforts — much of it clandestine — to make a nuclear bomb and how Israel does everything to foil Tehran. The book, simultaneously, sheds light on the remarkable successes Tel Aviv has achieved in forging new friendships in the Arab Sunni world, its former foe, thanks in part to the fears now stoked by a belligerent Shia Iran and its proxies in Yemen, Gaza and Lebanon.
Evyatar and Bob use their extensive contacts and reach among diplomats, spy masters and policy makers in the region and the US to reveal a remarkable, at times jaw-dropping, tale of an unending undeclared war between Iran, a huge landmass with 80 million people, and tiny Israel, with a population of nine million. It is a story of espionage, sabotage, assassinations and secret diplomacy, as gripping as any thriller. At the heart of it is the untold story of what the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, has done to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. The fight has been on almost since Iran saw the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Israel’s intelligence breakthrough
Israel achieved one of its biggest intelligence breakthroughs on January 31, 2018. Taking advantage of an unusually dark night, thanks to the longest total lunar eclipse of the century, Israeli agents — armed with night vision goggles and special blowtorches — cut through select two-meter-high steel vaults in an unmarked warehouse in Tehran. The team removed a collection of black binders containing the designs of the N-bomb Iran wants to build. The Mossad agents found a bonus: over 100 CDs with 55,000 files and videos documenting the top-secret Iranian nuclear programme, and a treasure trove of photographs of secret experiments. The Iranians had stored them in files in the hope that Israel would hack it all if hidden in computers. The calculation flopped.
All of this was loaded into two trucks and driven off into neighbouring Azerbaijan from where they quickly found their way to Israel. Iran’s crown nuclear jewels had fallen into the enemy’s hands, exposing, with proof documented by the Iranians themselves, how Tehran had been fooling the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as Western countries about its nuclear build-up. It took Israel months to translate the entire stuff from Farsi (Persian). It was a rare event when Israel publicly admitted to orchestrating the massive theft.
Both before and particularly after the 2018 heist, Israel has used various methods to launch large-scale attacks to destroy Iranian nuclear equipment and facilities as well as assassinate key Iranians engaged in the nuclear bomb project. It has also hit Iranian arms shipments to Hamas and Hezbollah and destroyed Syria’s Iranian-funded nuclear programme.
Unlike the raid on nuclear documents, Israel has never revealed what hand it had in the assassination of Major General Qasem Soleimani, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, on January 3, 2020. An American drone fired four laser-guided Hellfire missiles at Soleimani’s convoy as it moved away from the Baghdad airport. The Iranian was not only the mastermind of a bloody wave of attacks that bled the US forces in Iraq but also oversaw the arming of Iranian proxies both near and away from Israel. One American assessment claimed that Soleimani’s killing was far more important than Osama bin Laden’s death.
Down the months, three weeks after Joe Biden was elected the US President, the Mossad assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the head of Iran’s nuclear programme, not far from Tehran. The weapon used was a remote-controlled, satellite-linked machine gun. More crippling assassinations and attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities followed in 2021 and 2022. The dead also included those in Iran’s aerospace and drone programmes.
An informal military alliance with Iran’s rivals
According to the authors, the Israel-Iran cyber war is perhaps the most shadowy element in the conflict between the two countries. This is one area where Iran holds a slight upper hand. For one, Israel’s economy is so small that hacking a large insurance company can potentially destabilize the foundations of the country itself. In contrast, among its highly-educated population, Iran can draw enormous human resources to develop its own cyber sector. So far, the cyber clashes have amounted only to a virtual equivalent of border skirmishes. But some day this could undermine Israel’s security in a more existential way.
The Abraham Accords that have thawed relations between Israel and select countries in the region are well-known. The authors document the decades of unknown secret contacts Israel forged with its former Arab foes using, of all the policy tools, the Mossad. The Accords have shifted the balance of power in a still volatile region — a long distance from the times when Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat paid the ultimate price for suing for peace with Israel.
The main reason for the cosying up was Iran. Gulf states appeared to be more nervous about Tehran than even Israel. Realizing this, Tel Aviv began to sell a variety of arms and ammunition to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to begin with. These stealthy contacts lasted for a long time. Sudan and Morocco followed suit. Oman and Saudi Arabia were also actively courted. It was an informal military alliance between Tel Aviv and Iran’s Sunni rivals.
Iran’s revenge
Although the book was written well before the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023, it reveals certain telling insights into the Iranian mindset. The book wonders why Iran did not hit back after some of the more audacious Israeli attacks. A Tel Aviv University professor, Meir Litvak, tells the authors: “The Iranians will not wait forever. It is not smart to try to embarrass them.” That is precisely what Israel did. Indeed, after one Israeli strike, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif warned: “We will take our revenge against the Zionists.”
Iran has taken its revenge — through Hamas. This is where Israel failed to connect the dots. Despite 25 years of an unwritten war with Iran, Tel Aviv did not grasp fully how Tehran slowly and quietly helped build a deadly ring around Israel. The Mossad may be sharp and creative but it couldn’t smell the extraordinary length and breadth of the tunnelling network Hamas built right under its nose. It was also Israel’s arrogance that it concluded that Hamas would be satisfied with economic sops and never take on Tel Aviv again. And, in the process, Israeli right-wing leaders deliberately weakened the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas; and now Israel wants Abbas to take over Gaza after Hamas is eliminated.
The fact is Mossad’s extraordinary successes may have slowed down Iran’s nuclear programme but it has not stopped it. Tehran, by its own admission, is now a skip and a jump away from the 90 per cent purification level required for weapons-grade fissile uranium. There are doubts within Israel whether a nuclear Iran will really pose an existential threat to the Jewish state. There are also Israelis (besides much of Europe) who believe that Benjamin Netanyahu blundered by convincing the Donald Trump administration to axe the Iranian nuclear deal.
Iran has always wanted Israel to be bogged down so that it can pursue its nuclear programme. The opportunity has come its way with the ongoing Israel-Hamas war which Tel Aviv admits will drag on for months. Israel is battling only Hamas now; Hezbollah is waiting to clash with Israel. I wish this book was written or updated after October 7, when the Middle East map changed in a manner the Mossad had never thought was possible.
