Report: Mossad prevents multiple Iranian attacks on Israelis in Africa

The Mossad, the Jewish state’s external intelligence agency, has reportedly thwarted multiple Iranian attempts to attack Israelis abroad in recent months in three different African countries, Israeli Channel 12 reported on Sunday. 

The countries mentioned in the report are Senegal and Ghana in West Africa and Tanzania in East Africa. The three African countries are popular destinations for Israeli tourists and businesspeople. 

Africa is also attractive to terrorist organizations and terrorist-sponsoring regimes due to the continent’s perceived limited capabilities in preventing sophisticated terrorist plots. 

While Mossad’s high capabilities are known worldwide, the vast geographic distance between the targets in Africa also reveal Iran’s increasingly sophisticated capabilities to launch terrorist operations around the globe. According to the report, local African authorities apprehended five suspects, all with African passports. 

Iranian attempts to target Israeli and Jewish targets is not new. However, since 2020, Tehran appears to have dramatically stepped up its efforts to attack Israeli targets worldwide. The reason is likely linked to the ayatollah-led regime seeking revenge for multiple sabotage operations against Iranian nuclear sites and the assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, in November 2020, actions that Iran blames on Israel. 

In addition, the Jewish state reportedly also provided assistance to the United States in the assassination of the Iranian top general Qassem Soleimani outside Baghdad’s airport in January 2020. From Iran’s perspective, it perceives that it has many scores to settle with the Jewish state. 

Over the decades, Iranian-led terrorist attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets have left a lethal blood trail around the world. In 1992, Iran and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah targeted the Israeli embassy in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, an attack that claimed 30 lives and left more than 240 people wounded. In 1994, pro-Iranian Hezbollah launched a terrorist attack against the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds of civilians. It is to date the deadliest terrorist attack ever perpetrated in South America.

In 2012, five Israeli tourists were killed in Bulgaria and Israeli diplomats were targeted in India, Thailand and Azerbaijan. All these attacks were attributed to the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah. 

In early October, the Israeli billionaire businessman Teddy Sagi was reportedly a target of a suspected Iranian assassination attempt in Cyprus. While Iran denies any involvement, Jerusalem continues accusing the regime of targeting Israelis.

At the center of the long shadow war between Iran and the Jewish state, is the ayatollah regime’s controversial nuclear program. The Iranian regime denies that it seeks nuclear weapons and insists that its nuclear program is only meant for peaceful purposes.

However, few international experts believe Tehran’s claims. In addition, United Nations, Western and Israeli experts warn that the regime’s sophisticated nuclear program is increasingly speeding towards the development of a nuclear weapon.

Since Iranian leaders have repeatedly vowed to wipe the Jewish state off the map, Israel views Iranian nuclear weapons as an unacceptable existential threat. In addition, nuclear weapons in the hands of the ayatollahs would likely provoke a dramatic nuclear race in the Middle East that would make the volatile region even more dangerous than it is today.