“Once Israeli officials are quoted, it requires the Iranians to take revenge,” Danny Yatom, a former head of the Mossad, said in an interview Monday with a radio station run by the Israeli Army. “There are actions that must remain in the dark,” he added.
In the days before the attack, Israel asked the United States for assistance in protecting an Israeli-owned cargo ship that is currently in the Arabian Sea, an American official said.
Israeli officials expressed concern that the Hyperion Ray could be targeted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps following last week’s apparent mine attack by Israel on an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea, the U.S. official said. The Israeli government declined to comment.
The Helios Ray, a second ship owned by the same Israeli company, was attacked in February, and Israel blamed Iran.
But some analysts expressed the feeling that Iran would be unwilling to escalate further while there was still a chance that America might pare back sanctions on the Iranian economy in exchange for Iran’s scaling back its nuclear program.
Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel, said: “I don’t think the Iranians want a major confrontation at this point — I think they want a deal. And that doesn’t need a confrontation.”
In Israel, some also questioned whether the attack served a domestic purpose for Mr. Netanyahu, rather than just a foreign policy objective.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/12/world/middleeast/iran-israel-nuclear-site.html
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