A woman holds a Palestinian flag and another an Iranian flag as people gather for a protest against Israel's wave of strikes on Iran in central Tehran on Friday.ATTA KENARE/AFP/Getty Images
From computer worms to remote-controlled machine gunning and waves of attacking drones, for decades, Iran and Israel have been waging an undeclared, shadow war that reached a new peak Friday with a series of strikes against the Islamic republic.
The two countries clashed indirectly going back as early as the 1980s, as Iran targeted Israel via proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis and Syria’s then-president, Bashar al-Assad.
However, in recent years there have increasingly been direct confrontations, as Israel regarded Iran’s nuclear enrichment program as an existential threat. While this week’s attacks against Iran were of an unprecedented scale, here is a look at past clandestine operations and violent events.
Iran retaliates after Israeli strikes targeted nuclear facilities, top military leadership
Jan. 12, 2010: Iranian quantum physicist Massoud Ali-Mohammadi was killed outside his Tehran home by a remote-controlled bomb attached to a motorcycle. Iran authorities later hanged a suspect who they said had confessed that he was acting for Israeli intelligence. The victim was the first of several Iran nuclear scientists to be killed.
Nov. 29, 2010: Nuclear scientist Majid Shahriari was murdered by a bomb attached to his car by a motorbike rider. The same day, another researcher, Fereydoon Abbasi, and his wife were injured in a similar attack.
Nov. 12, 2011: A blast at a base near Tehran killed 17 people, including an architect of Iran’s long-range missile program, General Hassan Tehrani Moghaddam. The explosion is officially classified as an accident but both Western and Iranian sources said in media reports that they suspect it was a covert Israeli operation.
Jan. 31, 2018: Mossad agents broke into safes in a Tehran warehouse and stole an archive of scientific documents that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later used to bolster his claims against Iran and convince U.S. President Donald Trump to abandon the 2015 nuclear accord. In his press conference, Mr. Netanyahu named an Iranian scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as a key figure in the program.
July 2, 2020: A blast caused significant damage in a centrifuge assembly shop at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility. The New York Times quoted an unnamed Middle Eastern intelligence official who said Israel was responsible.
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Nov. 27, 2020: The scientist singled out by Mr. Netanyahu in 2018, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was killed at the wheel of his car by a remote-controlled machine gun hidden in the bed of a pickup truck parked on the side of a road.
April 11, 2021: Israeli media reported that the country was behind an explosion that caused a blackout and damages at the Natanz facility. Iran condemned the incident as an act of “nuclear terrorism.”
April 1, 2024: An Israeli airstrike against a building in the Iranian embassy complex in Damascus killed officers handling covert operations, including two Iranian generals, Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior commander of the elite Quds Force, and his deputy, Mohammad Hadi Haji-Rahimi.
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April 14, 2024: Iran responded to the Damascus airstrike by launching a nighttime attack on Israel with 120 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles and 170 drones. However, most of the barrage was intercepted by Israel, with assistance from U.S., Jordanian, French and British military.
July 28, 2024: A remote-controlled bomb hidden in a Tehran guesthouse killed a high-ranking Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who was in the capital to attend the inauguration of Iran’s president.
Sept. 27, 2024: An Israeli airstrike in Beirut killed Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah and an Iranian general, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Deputy Commander Abbas Nilforoushan.
Oct. 1, 2024: Iran launched 180 missiles at cities across Israel. The Iranian delegation to the United Nations said the missile barrage was a “legal, rational, and legitimate” response to Israeli actions.
Oct. 26, 2024: Israel retaliated with three waves of airstrikes against more than 20 military sites in Iran, targeting air-defence systems and the ballistic missile program.